Koh's Reckoning
by justcallmefaye
Summary: Complete. Post Series. Sequel to "Beyond the Rising Sun". The ancient spirit wreaks its revenge, but when the Avatar's love is not the Avatar's lover, innocent people are caught in the crossfire. Zutara. One-sided Kataang.
1. uno

Disclaimer: _Avatar_ is obviously not mine, because if it were, then this would be a cartoon and not a fanfiction. And it will never become mine, sadly, so I shall not repeat myself needlessly in future chapters.

A/N: This is a sequel to my other Zutara story, _Beyond the Rising Sun_. In order to understand much of this story (such as, how Zuko and Katara became romantically entangled in the first place), you will pretty much have to read that story first; I hope you have eight hours to spare for that, aha! However, this story deviates at the very end of BtRS, because the timing of the epilogue doesn't really fit, I think, with what happens here. Or maybe it does. In any event, you kind of need to read that one first. Okay? Okay! I hope you enjoy reading this, and as always, reviews would be lovely!

* * *

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_[the ancient spirit wreaks its revenge, but when the Avatar's love is not the Avatar's lover,_

_innocent people are caught in the crossfire]_

_**i.**_

In the darkness, it waits.

It does not sleep. It does not dream. It does not hope. In the empty, everlasting, fractional spaces between seconds, it simply waits. It bides its time, and it watches, and it listens, alert for the moment when its goal (because it can have a goal, because a goal is less human than a dream) can be fulfilled.

_Will_ be fulfilled, it corrects. Diction is important here. Years are nothing to an entity that has existed almost since the beginning of time itself—time is nothing to it, either. Time is something that happens to those mere mortals, scurrying around on their world of earth and air and fire and water.

This is but a matter of time, and that is the only way in which the concept matters.

It cannot die, not in the way humans conceive the idea; humans have tried, the_ Avatar_ has tried, but the Avatar is as human as the rest in the end. That Avatar has passed on, and the groaning wheels have turned, and now there is another. Different but still the same, still possessing that undying spirit that flits from body to body like an indecisive sparrow.

That spirit will suffer. It has vowed this. It has wrenched the heart from that spirit before, and it will do so again. It so longs to do so again, to cripple and to taunt and ultimately, in some sense, to destroy more absolutely than death ever could.

But what is this? It senses opportunity, a shifting of the two worlds, a thinning of the fabric in between. It can wrest an opening here, create a breach, slip through and perform its long-awaited vengeance. It can ply the fibers of space and time apart like a human separating woven cloth, and…

Ah…

It is pleased.

In the darkness, lips that are not its own curve in a twisted smile.

And from the darkness, it strikes.

* * *

Aang gazed at her face, at its smooth and delicate contours, memorizing the curves of her lips and cheek and the exact hue of her eyes. In the next moment, he repeated the process, trying to force every particle of his being to know this, to truly _know_ this. So that later, when his eyes were shut, these flickers of memories would reconnect and play back on the insides of his eyelids, a seamless replica of the occasion.

She looked so happy, blue eyes bright and shining with unshed tears, and he never wanted to forget that expression. Never wanted to forget how she looked, standing there in her native finery, draped in water-flowing robes of cerulean and indigo and azure. Never wanted to forget how her voice sounded or the way her wedding vows echoed in his ears.

Today she was a bride, and tomorrow she would be a wife, but she would always be Katara.

If only…

He swallowed against the lump of emotion in his throat, and he removed his near-reverent gaze from the sight of his beloved waterbender to glance sidelong at the Chief Sage. His chest tightened, and his gaze swept right back to her beaming face.

"If you would kneel, please," the Sage instructed, making a slight motion with one hand.

She obeyed, adjusting her layered gown to allow her to perform such an action without falling over. Her head bowed, and her long curls slipped forward, at least those not restrained by the intricate mesh of braids that coiled around the surmounting bun.

Aang could still see something of her face, and he saw her lips quirk, as if she were trying very hard to remain solemn and not grin like an absolute fool. On his part, he was glad that he was not facing the assembled guests because he knew he wasn't exactly the picture of solemnity himself.

He realized he couldn't remember how to breathe. Dear spirits, he was an _air_bender and he couldn't remember how to breathe.

The Chief Sage hefted something gold and gleaming into the air, raising it high for all to see, and he lowered it as he intoned, "May you have the blessing of Agni, and of Twi and La, in this appointment. I name you…"

Aang's throat was dry, and his eyes were pricking wetly. He thought it ought to be the other way around, but how could he not feel like this when Katara—of all people, why did it have to be _her_?—was just out of reach, was so close but was now—

"Fire Lady Katara!" the Sage announced, settling the golden flame in her dark hair. "Hail!"

"Hail!" the guests roared back, some more exuberantly than others; Sokka was particularly loud, and Aang could almost swear he heard Toph yelling something along the lines of _Looks like Sugar Queen's official royalty now!_ He blinked rapidly, unable to vocalize his own acceptance of her coronation—because he didn't accept it, damn it,_ he didn't accept it!_—and simply watched, now truly heartbroken, as she rose to her feet amid the tumultuous applause and laced her fingers through her husband's.

Zuko, on the other hand, _was_ grinning like an absolute fool, and the love in his golden eyes when he gazed at his bride nearly made Aang's stomach turn. He felt deeply ashamed for this jealousy, for this real anger, but he couldn't stomp it out. He, Aang, was the one she had discovered in the iceberg. He, Aang, was the one she had striven so hard to protect. He, Aang, was the one she was so obviously destined to be with. And he, Aang, was the one she had kissed when the world was new and the burden of his birth fulfilled.

So why had she just gotten married to _Zuko_?

He realized, probably belatedly, that he was glowering, and he hastily reassembled his features into something distinctly less threatening. It wouldn't do for the newlyweds to glance at him and find his face in some sort of terrible death rictus.

Katara had raised a hand during his internal conflict, and he watched her curiously; she still seemed so somber, so…well…regal. The gathered people obeyed the gesture, quieting down, and observed her as attentively as the Avatar.

"As my first official decree as Fire Lady," she declared, and beside her, Zuko arched his good eyebrow, making it clear that she was improvising. "I order you all…to stuff your faces at the celebratory feast!" she revealed, much more jovially, and grinned broadly as she said it.

The crowd roared its approval once more—and again, Sokka's cheers were impossible to miss—and began moving away from the palace's steps, heading for the courtyards, where all the banquet tables had been arranged. Aang hesitated, uncertain whether he should follow promptly; being here, within arm's reach of her but unable to wrap her in those arms, was agony, but he should offer his congratulations…

"I think the power's gone to your head," Zuko remarked, smirking as Katara turned to look at him.

"The power's gone to my head?" she echoed, a sultry sort of purr in her voice, and Aang's cheeks flamed even though neither words nor tone was directed at him. "If that's the case, I wonder what…_else_…this power rush will compel me to do…"

Aang wanted to inch away—or bolt, that would also be acceptable—but he found his feet rooted to the stone steps, and he was doomed to eavesdrop to the end.

Zuko's voice was hushed, as if he were halfway aware that someone could conceivably still hear. "Now, now, darling," he murmured, the endearment almost taunting, "it's our wedding night. You are not topping."

Aang twitched. He was not hearing this, _he was not hearing this…!_

"Mm…we'll see about that, Zuko," she replied softly, devilishly. From the corner of his eye, Aang saw her pull her new husband into a lengthy and involved kiss, and suddenly escape seemed like the best idea he'd ever had. Neither member of the Fire royalty took notice of his departure, and he glumly set off for the reception as he wrestled with his now-traitorous memory and even more treacherous imagination.

He very nearly resorted to banging his head against a wall.

* * *

"To my li'l sis!" Sokka declared, rising to his feet and brandishing his much-abused sake dish. "The waterbending Fire Lady—who'da thunk it?"

General laughter greeted that observation, and the warrior grinned, flushed with success and flushed even more with alcohol.

"An'…an' to my new brother-in…in…in-law!" he continued, his arm swinging about haphazardly and nearly dousing Suki and Toph with the rice wine. "Now…really…who'da thunk _that_? I mean, Zuko…well…here's to the Angry Jerk! Long live—" he hiccupped and resumed "—the happy coup-couple! May you life toget'er be…steamy!"

Zuko frowned at that, and beside him, Katara arched an eyebrow. "What?" she asked, not entirely certain what to make of that remark.

Sokka attempted to fix her with a patronizing look, but he rather failed with his eyes unfocusing every other second. "'Cause of the fire," he explained slowly, as if she were a small child. "An' yer water. So, together, there's…steam, or-or-or somethin'. Steamy." And he spread his hands, sake dish wobbling precariously, in an explanatory gesture.

"I think you've made your point," Suki sighed, tugging her inebriated husband back down to earth, at least on a physical level. He slumped on his cushion, bringing his drink to his lips, but she snatched it away in a very businesslike manner and held it out of his reach, not deterred by his flailing limbs.

Toph, who had been lounging with all her customary lack of decorum, hopped to her feet and hoisted her own cup in Zuko and Katara's general direction. "I'm not one for speeches, so here's all you're gonna get: to Sparky and Sweetness! Sparky, you watch your step, 'cause she ain't all that sweet sometimes, and she just might kick your ass if you put a toe out of line! Live long, be happy, and some other nonsense! Yeah."

The petite earthbender threw back her dish amid more laughter, and she plopped back onto her cushion with her typical broad, cheeky grin.

"That was better than Sokka's," Katara observed as levelly as possible, but she couldn't quite swallow all the giggles welling in her throat.

"Well, that would be hard _not_ to accomplish," Zuko pointed out dryly, and he tugged her a little closer, utilizing his arm slung around her waist.

"Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" Toph chanted, pounding her fist in rhythm against the heavily-laden tables, and other nearby guests—especially Sokka—eagerly took up the cheer.

The Fire Lord frowned. "You know, for being blind, you sure do see a lot," he grumbled, although much of his exasperation was good-natured.

The earthbender rolled foggy eyes. "Spirits, just plant one on her already! Pucker up for something sour, Sweetness!"

Katara's eyebrow managed to rise higher. "We are just rolling in the wit today," she remarked with a decent helping of genuine bemusement. "I think we should provide less sake at the next party we host, Zuko."

"That's funny," he mused, "I thought we should provide _more_." And to the accompaniment of applause, wolf-whistles, and catcalls, he captured his bride in a very decisive kiss. When he finally pulled back, she was noticeably breathless, and that only caused the assembled guests to cheer louder.

Recovering a smattering of her composure, Katara looked around for her oldest friend. "Back to the toasts," she reminded everyone loudly. "I think it's Aang's turn. Aang?"

The airbender jerked, as if he'd been caught dozing in class, and leapt smartly to his feet. "I, er, right," he stammered, fiddling with his practically untouched drink. "To Katara and…Zuko. You're getting the best girl in the world," he said, nodding at the firebender, "and Katara, you're, um…well, you're stuck with Zuko."

"Oho, that's _gotta_ hurt!" Sokka crowed, leaning back and throwing his arms up in the air.

With absentminded ease, Suki smacked him upside the head.

Aang's expression sobered, and while he was far enough away to make it appear that he was looking at both of them, Katara could tell she was bearing the whole weight of his gaze. But this was her wedding to Zuko, so she didn't give the matter a second thought.

"Really, though, I just want you to be ha…" The Avatar trailed off, brow furrowing, and he glanced around.

"Wants them to be ha? I don't get it," Sokka complained in a stage whisper.

"Aang, what's wrong?" Katara asked, straightening up from her lean against Zuko, real concern flickering across her face. It wasn't like him to lose his train of thought, especially not in the middle of such a sentiment.

He continued frowning in puzzlement for a distressingly long moment, but eventually he shrugged. "I guess it's nothing. I just thought I heard something…weird. Like when the young airbenders used bamboo stilts, something clicking like that."

"It was probably Snoozles gnawing on the sake bottle," Toph quipped as she picked dirt from beneath her fingernails. Beside her, Sokka guiltily set the glass container back down, looking properly chastised for his actions.

"Yeah, I bet that was it," Aang agreed, although he didn't look entirely convinced. He shook it off, though, and finished his toast. "So…that's it, pretty much. I just want you to be happy." Cloud-gray eyes searched ice-blue ones, almost as if he were begging her to show him some sign that she was not so that he could properly whisk her away.

Her forehead pinched slightly, but her soft smile was sincere. "We are," she confirmed strongly, hopeful that such a reassurance would lessen the blow—at least he knew she was happy, and he continuously professed that as his deepest desire.

Toph snorted. "Way to dampen the mood, Twinkle Toes. Whoever's up next, you better make it hilarious."

Iroh rose to his feet, still holding his plate of custard cake, and his face was nearly lost in all the wrinkles caused by his head-splitting smile.

"Oh, this better not be about tea," Zuko muttered, though he was smiling, and Katara laughed and cuddled back into his side.

The former general cleared his throat and beamed at the groom. "I would like to tell you all a story. Twenty-one years ago, I found myself blessed with a nephew…"

Zuko groaned. "It's worse than tea," he lamented as Iroh continued his lengthy tale with all the pomp of a proud papa. "It's my life story!"

"Shh," Katara shushed, even though he hadn't been speaking loud enough for anyone but her to hear. "I don't want to miss the part about how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed you were!"

He grimaced theatrically, but he didn't interrupt his uncle and merely pulled his wife closer, dusting a kiss onto her hair.

* * *

Zuko slumped, unable to keep his weight on his hands, and rested his forehead against the side of her neck. He felt her relax as well: her body sinking more into the bed, her fingers unclenching and sliding from his back down his arms, her legs loosening on his hips. And it might have only been because he was pressed so heavily—but comfortably, achingly so—against her, but for all the tension melting from their limbs, it seemed as if she were just as close to him as before.

He exhaled, his breath cooling the sweat on her throat, and let his eyes shut. He was tired, a warm, muddled kind of exhaustion, but he did not want to sleep and miss an instant of this precious night. There was still so much, even now, that she needed to know.

"I love you," he mumbled, his lips shaping the words on her skin. "Agni, Katara, I love you so much…"

She shifted ever so slightly, almost cradling his stretched form with her curled one. "I know," she breathed in reply, and the fingers of one hand sifted through the dampened hair at the nape of his neck. "I love you, too. More than anything." Her voice was nearly raw with sincerity.

He summoned the strength to raise himself up, and he traced a hand reverently down the curve of her cheek, his eyes following the motion as if mesmerized. "How did I get so lucky?" he wondered aloud. "I don't deser—"

"Don't be self-deprecating," she chided gently, stealing a slow kiss. "It's obnoxious."

He chuckled, the sound as soft as the shadows. "Yes, my lady."

She smiled at that. "I suppose that's right, isn't it? I'm really the Fire Lady."

"You're _my_ Fire Lady," he corrected, a shade possessively, and he nuzzled into her neck, tilting her head back into the pillow.

"I can accept that," she acquiesced, eyes closing involuntarily as he explored the subtle pounding of her pulse. "Because…ahh…we need to do this again."

"In due time," he replied nonchalantly, even as his hand settled on her waist once more. "I'll do whatever you want in an hour."

She moved her arm, tugging on the hair she still had fisted between her fingers and lifting his lips from her collar. She fixed him with a stern look and a raised eyebrow. "I'll give you half an hour, Zuko, and that's it."

"Someone's insatiable," he teased, unable to keep a smirk from flitting across his refined features. "Is it the same someone who thought we shouldn't be having all this fun?"

She rolled her eyes but grinned. "Remind me again why I thought _not_ sleeping with you was preferable," she murmured, drawing him close and sealing his lips with hers.

"It had something to do with having a genuine relationship, I recall," he said musingly as her lips followed his jawline.

"We all make mistakes," she purred into his ear, her breath tickling the back of his neck. A shiver raced up his spine. "I intend not to be able to walk tomorrow, which, of course, would leave me stuck here, with nothing better to do…"

He matched her smirk for smirk. "Damn straight there's nothing better," he declared. "Although, come to think of it, I do have a country to run…"

"Work later, play now," she rebuked. "Your hour's up."

"No, it's not…" he began protesting, but then he paused and reviewed that statement. Surely he didn't actually want to delay… "Oh, yes…I suppose it is," he revised, sliding his hand down the curve of her hip and following the smooth line of her thigh. He had only just kissed her when she pulled away from his questing mouth, a peculiar expression on her face.

Zuko studied her curiously for a moment before feeling compelled to prompt, "What? Did I hurt you?"

"No," she replied quickly, but she maintained her odd look. "Did…did you hear something just now?"

"Yes, I heard you moan my name," he answered smugly.

She spared him a brief glare. "Oh, ha ha," she grumbled. "I'm serious. I really think I heard something that…well, I feel like I shouldn't have…"

He bowed his head, biting back a sigh, and then studied her face. She did appear worried, and he shelved his vague annoyance in favor of concern. "Alright, Tara. What did you hear?"

She shrugged, her shoulders barely moving. "I'm not really sure," she admitted, eyes darting around the shadows of the royal suite. "It was like…tapping. Or drumming. Fingers? On glass, maybe?"

They looked as one towards the floor-length glass doors leading to their expansive balcony. Zuko could see nothing beyond the transparent panes; the moon was full and bright, and the night was empty and still. And it wasn't as if there were any trees high enough to strike the windows and produce such a sound.

And then…

A rapid succession of clicks, as of fingers drumming. But Zuko could almost swear that he hadn't actually _heard_ them at all; it was as if awareness had originated in his mind without his ears contributing a thing. From the way Katara shrank beneath him, hunkering deeper into the mattress, he knew she had sensed it, too.

"It's so loud," she whispered, and he made no mention of the pain her fingers caused as they bit deeply into his arm and back. He was too preoccupied with the conviction that for him, at least, it hadn't been any more than a distant sort of sound—certainly not remotely close to _loud_.

"I heard it, too," he mumbled instead, and he rose lithely to his feet. He located his pants without too much difficulty and tugged them on before sneaking towards the balcony doors, utilizing the black shadows in their room for cover. He was peripherally aware of Katara rising also and draping her silk robe around her slender form, but he had reached the windows and peered out…

And time seemed to slow, seconds dragging on and out until any pendulum would appear immobile and silent. He was continuing to move—he knew on some level that this was true—but his consciousness had slowed with his perception, and all he was aware of was this frozen sensation: limbs locked in place, eyes focused on one point, heart lodged mid-beat.

Trapped in the space between seconds.

A sudden clattering, thunderous and terrifying, echoed in his mind's ears without needing his body's. It was as if a hailstorm had broken out, but he was staring out the window, and the sky was clear of clouds. The clacking swelled, without any obvious source, to a deafening volume, and his very soul cringed in reflexive pain.

Somehow he identified her curtailed cry above it all.

"Zu—!"

Equally sudden quiet that was more horribly deafening than the noise descended on the room, and Zuko nearly tripped as his foot impacted with the floor before his mind could catch up with everything. He whirled, slamming his back against the wall and bringing up his hands in a traditional firebending stance, his harsh breathing now the only sound. But nothing stirred at all in their bedroom; Katara stood with her back to him as he had seen her rise, and she was the sole person he could see.

"Katara, what…" he began to inquire, but she moved then, causing him to swallow his question.

She fell backwards with unnervingly perfect grace, her slim body not so much crumpling or collapsing as undulating, as if riding an invisible wave. She impacted almost gently with the mattress, bouncing up but once before settling, supine and still.

He darted to her side, leaping onto the bed and crouching beside her, one hand reaching to shift her long, tangled hair from her…

From her…

His sharp inhalation hissed through his teeth and slammed into his heart as it jerked up his throat, and the collision turned his shocked and agonized roar into a strangled, impotent half-yell. As much as his mind rebelled, screaming over and over again that this was a lie, that this _could not be_, he could not tear his eyes away from the gut-wrenching sight.

Katara no longer had a face.


	2. due

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**ii.**_

Zuko's fingers, extended mere inches from the blank expanse of skin where Katara's face should have been, trembled so badly he could barely focus on them. Or perhaps that was the fault of the moisture that reflexively, inexorably filled his eyes, searing the tender tissue with liquid saline and causing a burning that was a thousand times worse than the flames of his father's fire.

How could this have happened? _What_ had even happened? One instant she'd been fine, and the next…and then somehow she'd become _gone_ without ever leaving. He sank his teeth deeply into his lower lip, not caring in the slightest if the pressure eventually drew blood; no pain could possibly compare to this, this acute, unrelenting agony.

"Agni, Katara," he croaked, as hoarse as if he'd been lost in the desert for weeks with nothing to drink. "You can't…you can't possibly be dead…you just _can't_…Katara, please, don't be…don't be…"

His fingers, still shaking, finally made contact with her skin, pressing gently into her neck, just to the side of her throat. He couldn't touch her face—or whatever it would be called now—but he could check for a pulse, even though some part of his mind distantly recalled that the heart required oxygen to operate, and how could she breathe in this state? He braced himself for stillness, for unmoving flesh.

So he blinked, releasing more tears when he encountered her weak but definitely present heartbeat.

"Katara?" he breathed, hardly expecting her to answer, although at this rate he wouldn't have been surprised. She did not, though, remaining as unresponsive as ever.

Urgency lanced through his system: if she were alive, then she could be saved. That had to be true. It simply had to be. He shifted his position on the bed, reorientating himself so that he could look at her right-side up, and he gripped her cheeks, his hands only briefly hesitating before making contact. She _felt_ normal, her skin as smooth and warm as he remembered, and his brow furrowed in puzzlement; he had anticipated her being cold, unreal. A frown marred his lips as well, and carefully, as if he were being dared to touch something absolutely repulsive, he slid the fingers of one hand across, towards the center of her face.

His expression slackened in bewildered disbelief when his fingers followed the familiar contours of her features. He couldn't see anything; it looked as if his fingers were tracing empty air, but no, _no_, it was all there: the slope of her nose, the arch of her brows, the feathery softness of her meshed eyelashes. Operating on some kind of automatic, he ventured further down and encountered her lips. They were slightly parted, and his fingertip registered the fine cracks in the soft flesh and the moisture on the inside of her lower lip, and he felt her breath cooling the faint dampness as she slowly but steadily exhaled. The breaths were intermittent, even more so than if she'd been deeply asleep, but they were there.

She was alive.

His whole body sagged in relief, shoulders slumping and head bowing, his forehead heavily making contact with her collarbone. Keeping one hand on her face, fingers splayed to touch as much as possible and reassure himself that it was real, he clutched her shoulder with his other, openly sobbing. There had been too much emotion in too short a period of time, and he felt that he'd surely explode if he didn't release it somehow. As he wept in relief and a dozen other emotions, a train of thought developed in his hindbrain, somewhere unbothered by his dizzying panorama of feelings.

If he could _feel_ her face, then why couldn't he _see_ it? Why was one sense deceived and the others untouched? What kind of bizarre power could have rendered her in this state? Certainly nothing of this world…

His eyes flickered open, and he stared blankly at the tears that had pooled in the hollow of her throat. That seemed like such a gamble, to assume that it was…but nothing else could possibly make sense…

Swallowing, he hastily wiped the drying stains from his cheeks and gathered her limp body in his arms, hefting her protectively against his chest. There was only one person he knew to consult with concerning Spirit World interference, and that person happened to be conveniently staying in the guest wing of the palace.

* * *

Aang couldn't sleep.

That's not to say he didn't try. He had retired early from the reception, weary of forcing smiles until his face hurt; how was he supposed to be pleased with the state of things? Pleased with the reality of Fire Lady Katara? And that haunted him, whirling in slow, mocking swirls in his head, and he tossed and turned for hours. The silken sheets had gotten all tangled around his body and especially his legs, and he had eventually kicked them away irritably and risen, resorting to pacing in an attempt to expend this desperate energy.

But he couldn't tear his thoughts away from the one subject he wanted least to dwell on. He certainly didn't want to think about what was going on in the royal suite at this very moment, about how Zuko was daring to touch _his_ Katara over and over again and in ways that Aang could barely even comprehend except in his darkest dreams. But the images wouldn't go away, and he had to carefully reign in his jealous outrage lest he trigger the Avatar State and blow the palace to bits.

He slumped on the cushioned bench at the foot of the bed, balancing his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his hands, dejected and angry all at once. He was supposed to be the one caressing her curves and making her shiver, not that scar-faced turncoat who'd chased him from pole to pole without remorse—

Aang returned sharply to reality when his bedroom door was flung open so hard that it ricocheted off the jamb and slammed shut again. His nocturnal intruder wasn't struck by the door, though; he had entered so swiftly, so purposefully, that there hadn't been time.

The Avatar's eyebrows shot up to where his hairline would have been, and he flushed, partially from sheer confusion but mostly because neither Zuko nor Katara were notably dressed. The Fire Lord was only wearing a pair of loose-fitting pants, and Katara—well, Aang swiftly learned that silk wasn't the most concealing fabric. The shadows of the room concealed the blush that surely raged from his chin all the way back to the base of his skull, and he didn't get to utter a word of question before Zuko had gently but quickly deposited Katara on Aang's bed.

For a fleeting, nonsensical moment, Aang believed that it hadn't worked out, that she had seen the error of her ways—and Zuko happily had seen the same—and the firebender had come to return her to her rightful lover. But that notion passed when the Avatar realized that Katara hadn't moved since Zuko had burst in, not even to catch herself against the mattress. Her head had been tucked into her husband's chest, and now it was lolled to the side, her disarray of curls blocking all view of her face.

Was she hurt? Zuko had hurt her, hadn't he!

"What did you—" Aang began to snap in righteous fury, but Zuko beat him to the punch.

"Aang, quick—something's wrong with her. You have to help—figure out the answer or something."

The airbender was taken aback by the expression on the elder man's face: pleading, desperate. And so the envy calmed from a frothing boil to a sullen simmer, and he approached with his characteristic lightness, kneeling beside her and turning her head…

Ice filled his veins, as surely as if she had waterbent his blood into a frozen solid. He wasn't aware of Zuko's hurried promptings or that his jaw had slackened; all he could see was what was no longer there. Her face was gone, wiped clean and leaving nothing but trackless tan flesh behind.

"Koh…" Aang breathed, hardly aware of that utterance. He couldn't think past the void that had suddenly opened in his chest and indiscriminately swallowed all his organs.

"Koh? What's koh?" Zuko demanded, bracing his hands on the bed next to his wife and trying to catch Aang's eyes, but the airbender wouldn't snap out of his blank, horrified stare. "Aang, come on—what's going on? If you know something, spit it out already! _Aang!_"

The Avatar jerked back into himself when the firebender barked his name; he looked up quickly, the kind of nervous reaction that a deer would display after catching wind of its hunter. "I—Zuko—it's Koh. Koh's a-a-a spirit, an ancient, ancient spirit, and he…well…" He waved his arm in a limp, all-explanatory gesture. "He…steals faces. Collects them."

Zuko paled further, if that were possible, and he swallowed with obvious difficulty. His gaze slowly returned to study Katara's lack thereof, his eyebrows pinching and a muscle in his jaw tightening. "Steals faces," he echoed tonelessly. His voice dropped sharply in volume, barely a whisper as he added, "But why _her_, Aang? What has Katara ever done to upset such a spirit?"

The tattooed man shrugged unhelpfully, needing to look away from the waterbender, unable to stomach the sight. "I can't imagine why Koh targeted her…although…" He trailed off, his own brow wrinkling thoughtfully. "I thought, at the reception, that I heard clicking or tapping. Koh has these weird, crab-like legs…I bet they'd sound like that, but I don't know how…"

Zuko nodded in agreement. "Katara said she heard that, too, right before this spirit attacked her. And I also did, but she was convinced it was deafeningly loud, and it wasn't, not until the end. We probably heard it because Koh was targeting her, but…how come you…?"

Something chilled the Avatar, deep inside his gut. Vague memories recalled themselves—meeting Koh during the siege of the Northern Water Tribe, listening to the spirit's bragging about stealing the face of his past life's love; and then, some time later, he had conversed with that past life, the Water Avatar Kuruk, and the man had recounted the loss, how it had been the price exacted for his foolishness, how he had then tried to kill Koh…

Aang's wide eyes slid unwillingly to rest on Katara's featureless face. Was this revenge, then? Did the ancient spirit resent that long-ago attempt to ends its existence? Or did Koh simply see fit to put Aang in his place as well?

Was this _his_ fault?

"Maybe it's because you're the Avatar," Zuko was saying, and the younger man gratefully returned to the present, not wanting to contemplate that ugly possibility any longer. "So you're connected to the Spirit World or something. But what I don't get is…here, feel her face," he said. "It looks like it's gone but it's not. She's still breathing and everything, but she's unconscious or something."

"What?" Aang wondered aloud, and he tentatively obeyed the firebender, tracing the unseen lines of her nose and cheeks and brow. "It's an illusion? I don't get…" He frowned deeply and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, doing his level best to draw a conclusion. "I mean, in the Spirit World, I saw a curly-tailed blue-nose monkey, only it didn't have its blue nose anymore, of course…it was moving and 'alive' and all, but that was in the Spirit World. I don't see how Koh could even get at Katara here. Even if he could somehow…force a breach between the two worlds, he still shouldn't have been able to do any physical…except he didn't do any physical damage, did he," he realized, more musingly. "Her face isn't really stolen; that's just a trick…"

Zuko looked at him in exasperation. "Could you make a solid statement, Aang? Whenever you're up to it, of course."

Aang ignored the elder man's remark, continuing to talk as if he were simply spelling it all out to himself and not really including Zuko in the conversation. "In the Spirit World, you have no corporeal form…your face there could, conceivably, be literally removed from the rest of your body…" And what had happened to Kuruk's bride, Ummi? She had been taken into the Spirit Oasis pond at the North Pole—abducted, body and soul, into the Spirit World. Koh had her face; Aang had seen it. But you couldn't take physical objects, like a person's body, across the boundary between the two realms. The Avatar was well aware of that fact, as he always left his body behind when taking such trips.

Katara's body was here. She hadn't been absorbed like Ummi. Without a doorway like the Oasis, Koh should not have been able to claim her entire being, and he had not; he had simply disguised her face and left her unconscious. The only thing he would've been able to take was…

"Her soul," Aang whispered, comprehension dawning and wiping the light from his eyes. "Koh didn't take her face; he took her soul, her spirit back with him to the Spirit World. And so we would know it was him, he disguised her face like some sort of sick signature…In the Spirit World," he explained, speaking faster now, "Koh can take your real face—because you're just your soul there. But here, in the real world, he couldn't damage her corporeal form…so he settled with stealing her soul…"

"He stole her _soul_?" Zuko echoed weakly, his strong frame buckling. "What…what does that…?"

Aang studied the waterbender critically. "She's not dead—you said so yourself; she's just unconscious. When I leave my body here, I certainly don't die. For the meantime, I think we can assume that her body will continue…well, working properly, provided she is cared for."

Zuko nodded slowly, brow still deeply furrowed. "But what then? How do we get it back? Her soul, I mean."

Aang remembered Kuruk, and his many failed attempts to reclaim his beloved, and had to force those dire thoughts from his mind. "Erm…I think…if I go to the Spirit World, perhaps I can…steal her back?"

Resolution flared in the Fire Lord's eyes, hardening them to shadowed golden steel. "Oh, no, Aang. I'm not going to sit here and keep an eye on your body while you're off rescuing her. I'm going with you."

The Avatar quirked an eyebrow, not expecting such an offer—or an order. "What? Zuko, you're not the Avatar. You can't just cross over whenever you want. You'd have to die."

For an instant, just an instant, the determination in Zuko's face clearly said that he would be wholly willing to accept such a consequence. But then his expression crumpled pensively, and he glanced away.

Aang's mind ran on after that idea, though, and he remembered once more that Ummi had been taken into the Spirit World—and hadn't Sokka been taken once, too, by Hei Bei? And in any event, he was the Avatar; he might be able to drag Zuko's essence along with him, just reach into the firebender's heart and tug his soul right out. He shook his head vaguely. "I want to consult with Avatar Kuruk, who has encountered Koh before, and he might be able to…what is it?"

Zuko was staring at him, something close to suspicion shading his regal features. "One of your past lives has met this spirit before?"

A chill inexplicably trickled down Aang's spine, but he agreed nevertheless. "Yeah…so?"

The firebender straightened, and the airbender recalled that the elder man had several very nice inches on him, and he gulped reflexively. The glint in Zuko's eyes was anything but friendly. "What happened back then?" And when Aang hesitated, the other growled, "_Tell me_."

The tattooed man swallowed again, his throat dry and scratchy, and his previous fear that this was somehow his doing welled up again in his chest and made it hard to breathe. "K-Koh took Kuruk's bride, Ummi, just before they said their vows. A-A-And then Kuruk tried to…to…" He quailed under Zuko's inferno of a glare and finished in a whisper, "to kill Koh."

The Fire Lord's eyes narrowed to golden slits. "This is _revenge_?" he demanded, his voice steeped in incredulity along with the swelling anger.

"I-I don't know…" Aang admitted plainly, unconsciously slipping back a step when Zuko took one forward.

The scarred man glanced aside briefly, his gaze softening for an instant as he cast it over his incapacitated wife. Once it swept back to Aang, though, the ire returned tenfold. His voice, while quiet, carried an audible threat.

"Do you still love her?"

He couldn't answer. The affirmation refused to come, lodging in his throat in a desperate attempt at survival.

The firebender took another step forward and fisted his hands in the limp Avatar's collar. "_Do you still love her?_" he snarled, his teeth baring bestially, his breath red-coal hot.

"What does it matter? She married _you!_" Aang shot back, still halfway transfixed by the other's loosed rage.

Small flames flickered at the corners of Zuko's mouth. "What does it matter?" he repeated. "It _matters_, Aang! If this Koh stole the face of some other Avatar's love, what's to stop him from doing the same to you? If this other Avatar tried to kill Koh, why wouldn't he want revenge? And maybe now he has it!" He roared the last sentence before flinging Aang aside and spitting blue fire at the ceiling.

The airbender had recovered his balance easily, but he staggered back all the same, eager to put distance between himself and the maddened Fire Lord. He hadn't been this scared of Zuko since that day—that first day—when the then-prince had cornered him in his cabin.

"Zuko," he said, desperate to pacify, "that might not be true. You don't know—"

"Don't know?" the dark-haired man echoed mockingly. "What else could Katara have done to enrage such a spirit—and if what you said is true, then Koh wanted to make sure we knew it was him by disguising her face, and you're the only person around who's had any contact and could make this connection! This is _your fault_, you traitorous bastard, _your fault!_"

Aang blanched, stumbling back further as the firebender stalked closer. "Traitor? What the hell is that supposed to mean? You're the one who stole her from me in the first place! She was _mine!_"

"I didn't steal her; she chose me! Chose! And you're a traitor for lusting after your _best friend's wife_ and putting her in this danger! You _bastard!_ _How could you?_"

The Avatar ducked and dodged as Zuko tried to grapple him, no doubt so that he could slam his head against a wall until his skull split open like a ripe melon. Aang thought he could probably beat the Fire Lord in a battle, but he didn't want it to come to that, not when all this guilt was gnawing away at his chest cavity because Zuko had probably assumed correctly, even though he hardly dared to admit that. And not when Katara was just lying there, violated and vulnerable.

He swiftly airbent himself around the bed so that she lay between the two men; he knew it was a cowardly move—typical airbender, he could hear Toph scorning—but he didn't want this to come to blows.

"I'm sorry!" he yelled, sensing that volume would be the only thing that might register with the firebender. "I'm sorry I love her, alright? I can't help it! She's Katara! And I'm sorry this happened—how could you imagine that I'd _want_ this to happen? Maybe I didn't want her to marry you, but I sure as hell didn't want Koh to steal her face! And I will do everything in my power as Avatar, and more than that besides, to ensure that her soul is reunited with her body!" He faltered but forced the words out. "So…so she can be with you. She's…she's happy with you. I could see it in her eyes. She…"

Zuko relaxed marginally, fire ceasing to spark at his fingertips, and simply watched the younger man.

Aang's eyebrows pinched. "She never looked at me like that," he confessed, barely audible. "With that real, lasting kind of love. Spirits know why she picked you, but she did, and…and I can't fight that decision, as much as I want to. I can't."

Zuko glanced away, as if he hadn't wanted to hear such things, or at least hadn't wanted to put Aang in such a position. "Sometimes I wonder the same thing," he replied, hoarse. "But she knows, and I guess that's enough."

Aang acknowledged that with a wordless, weary nod, and he backed away from the waterbender, putting a respectful distance between them. Zuko tenderly lifted his bride back into his arms, cradling her to his chest in a sideways embrace.

"We're going to need to tell Sokka. And Chief Hakoda. And the others," he said woodenly.

"Yeah," Aang agreed. "I do want to consult with Avatar Kuruk. But I think the only way we might be able to do this is to go to the Spirit Oasis in the North Pole…"

Zuko shrugged, but he minimized the gesture so he didn't jostle Katara. "Whatever it takes," he vowed. "I will go far past the ends of the earth to get her back."

Aang smiled, grim and one-sided. "So would I."

* * *

In the darkness, she wakes.

But perhaps that observation is inaccurate; waking, after all, follows sleeping, and she does not believe that she was sleeping or unconscious in any way. She can hardly remember closing her eyes, but she must have, because they open now, lashes parting and revealing nothing.

For a moment—but is that what it is? Time doesn't feel the same here, wallowing in uncertain indecision—she fears that she is blind. There should be no other explanation for why this darkness is so absolute, this darkness that defies the definition of _dark_, laughs at it, regards it as something insufficient. This place is not dark—it is _black_. It is the sort of darkness that would exist if shadows themselves could cast shadows, an utter, sucking void.

It is an abyss.

She is not blind, though. The moment passes, and she looks down at herself and finds that her body is inexplicably lit. She can see her arms and her hands, her torso and her legs, but knows that she should not be able to. Where is the light source that feeds her eyes? She turns her head, searching, but can locate nothing—or rather, she locates only nothing, for nothing is the only thing here.

She studies herself again, for something strikes her as odd. After pondering the unsettled sensation, she realizes what is amiss: there are no shadows on her body. Her skin is a smooth, even tone, not varying in the slightest. She twists around, awkwardly glancing down her back, and she kicks her legs and waves her arms. But there is still no change, even though there should be shadows if there is light.

But, she thinks, there shouldn't be any light in the first place. This place, this void, shatters the laws of nature, mocking them derisively as something to rule lesser things.

A shiver creeps down her spine, and she wonders bleakly if she is dead. How else could she be somewhere that makes no sense? This could, perhaps, be the Spirit World…but she remembers how the Avatar described it, and it is not like this—or at least, not supposed to be. There is light in the Spirit World, and ground, and…

She pauses mid-thought, slowly turning her eyes towards the blackness she is standing on. Is there ground? Logic dictates that there must be, but logic has not performed well so far. So she crouches, tentatively extending a hand, and traces her fingertips around her feet.

Again, she feels nothing. Panic accelerates her heart, but she forces herself to calm, to think this through. She notices that she doesn't truly feel anything on the soles of her feet, but it is not the same as freefalling through air or treading water—those she has experienced, and this is not like that. She is buoyed, in some manner, but as inexplicably as she is lit. Perhaps, she muses, she is only imagining this "ground" and this "light" because it is all she knows, because she requires such things to function.

Once more, she considers the possibility that she is dead, or in some limbo. With trembling fingers, she reaches up cautiously and lays her hand against her throat, shifting to the side and seeking the reassuring pulse of her carotid artery. She encounters only stillness. But how can that be? Didn't she just feel her heart accelerate? Maybe, though, she imagined that reaction, too; maybe here, her thoughts are more powerful, a true case of mind over matter.

Her fingers pass over her parted lips as she forces her lungs to empty, but she feels nothing, not the slightest whisper of breath. And she realizes that she feels…strange. She is neither hungry nor full, refreshed nor tired; all ordinary, _living_ physical functions have vanished into this black ether. She is blank.

She swallows, feels her throat working, wonders if her throat actually exists. She can see, in a limited fashion, and feel as well. Can she hear? She calls out experimentally, and yes, the sound registers, but it almost seems as if it arrived directly in her brain, bypassing her ears entirely. It also does not echo, even though she believed this place was vast; apparently, there is nothing for the sound waves to ricochet off of, if there are even sound waves. Her cry is simply absorbed, as if all this black were thick, muffling velvet.

So she can see, but there is a void. She can hear, but there is silence. She can move, but there is nowhere to go.

In the darkness, she is trapped.

In the darkness, she is alone.

And in the darkness, Katara cries, even though she has no real tears to shed.


	3. tre

* * *

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**iii.**_

The Avatar and the Fire Lord wasted no time; it was as if the sheer magnitude of the crisis had borne them quickly past wallowing in shock and landed them square in the middle of taking action. While Aang went to round up the various people who ought to be informed of Katara's awful condition, Zuko had carried his unconscious wife back to their suite, as he had finally realized that having her lay around in her robe wasn't really the best idea.

So now, both of them dressed in several more layers than previously, the two benders resided on one of several sofas in the outer chamber of the royal suite. Zuko had Katara cradled protectively in his lap, one of his arms hooked around her bent knees and the other supporting her shoulders, keeping her head safely tucked into his chest. Sokka, Suki, Hakoda, and Iroh had already arrived, and Aang was now off fetching Toph, the last person who required immediate notification.

Sokka and Suki sat on the couch opposite Zuko's, and a low mahogany table embossed with the traditional Fire symbol squatted on the thick, ornately woven rug between them. The Water Tribe warrior had his head in his hands, elbows balanced on his knees, and the Kyoshi warrior was rubbing his back soothingly. If Toph had been present already, she probably would've wondered aloud whether Sokka's pose was due to duress over his sister or the splitting headache he had doubtless received from his zealous consumption of sake. And Sokka would have admitted that it was an unfortunate combination of both.

Hakoda was pacing with swift, long strides, eating up the distance from one wall of the room to the other, and each turn was executed so sharply it was barely a movement at all. His face was taut, and the lines he already had from weathering and age had only deepened with worry. There was something else about his eyes, too, something hollow and blank and hauntingly familiar, but no one questioned what it was. It was only too obvious that at her current age, Katara very greatly resembled her mother. And it was even more obvious that Hakoda could not suffer another loss like that—not his daughter on top of his wife. He kept glancing at Katara with each pass across the chamber, as if he hoped that maybe this time she would wake up, this time she would be alright.

She remained boneless in her husband's arms, though, boneless and faceless and soulless.

Iroh had been brewing tea since the moment he'd appeared, his usual action in the face of crisis or in face of just about everything, and now he poured the pale liquid into the appropriate amount of cups.

"Chamomile will calm the nerves," the former general announced to the room at large in his gruffly soothing voice. "And here, chew on this: it will help your headache."

Sokka accepted both the proffered tea cup and bundle of herbs, chewing grimly on the latter. He pulled a face at the bitter taste, but his grief was too profound for him to complain. Instead, he said hoarsely, "I can't believe any of this. I just saw her—we all just saw her. She was so happy and, well, _alive_…"

He buried his head in his hands again, stoically chewing on the herbs, and Suki half-embraced him, casting an anxious glance at Zuko.

The Fire Lord kept staring at the table, except the distance in his eyes suggested he wasn't focusing on it at all, and only the routine pulse of a muscle in his jaw indicated he was aware of the situation…that, and the way he wouldn't let go of Katara, as if he were terrified that Koh would swoop out of nowhere and steal the rest of her, too.

"Chief Hakoda, would you like some tea?" Iroh asked, lifting a cup.

The man shook his head, a curt, economical motion. "I would like answers," he stated tersely instead.

"We already know what happened," Sokka said in a muffled half-moan. "Some weird spirit-thing stole her soul. Aang told us that much when he brought us here, Dad."

"Then I would like a _solution_," Hakoda amended acidly, spinning sharply on his heel and beginning his journey anew across the room. He halted abruptly, though, when the double doors banged open as Toph—and Aang, to a much lesser degree—made their entry.

The earthbender had a frown on her face and her hands on her hips as she single-handedly challenged the universe. "What's this I hear about Sugar Queen being in trouble? Who messed with Sweetness when my back was turned, eh? Didn't they know that I'm blind and where I'm looking doesn't matter? Somebody, talk!" she barked, still standing in the doorway.

Aang sighed and rather carefully snagged onto her sleeve, indicating with a tug that she join the rest of the group at the sofas. She stomped over, the exaggerated aggressiveness of her demeanor starkly revealing just how affected she was by her friend's condition.

"I already told you," Aang said wearily, though his exhaustion was not from the repetition but rather from the subject matter itself. "She was attacked by an ancient, powerful spirit, who stole her soul and her face. I brought you all here in the hope that maybe together, we'd be able to figure this out."

"You're the Avatar," Hakoda pointed out stonily, and despite his tone, it was less an accusation and more a statement of fact. "You commune with the Spirit World and bring her back. I fail to see the issue here."

The airbender slumped in a cushy chair set at the narrow end of the table, closest to Zuko and Suki. He massaged his forehead, his arrow rumpling as his brow furrowed in impotent frustration. "The problem is that I can't just do that, with all respect, Chief Hakoda. Koh is immensely strong and easily one of the first independent spirits—he's not attached to an aspect of the physical world, unlike Agni or Twi or La. He's just…_there_, and he does whatever he wants, and he especially holds no respect for the Avatar. He will not surrender her soul because I ask him to. In fact," he admitted grudgingly, "that's probably the last reason in both worlds that he'd consider."

"Then you will make him see reason," the elder tribesman said, clearly resorting to his roots as a warrior. "You have untold generations of Avatars before you from which you can seek help and receive power. If it comes to a battle, you should be able to vanquish this Koh easily."

"If it's a fight, then I'm in!" Toph interrupted, punching a fist into the air. She was seated on the arm of the couch next to Zuko and Katara, and beneath her wild black bangs, her forehead wrinkled in a frown. "Hey, now," she said, reaching cautiously to Katara's face, her fingers tracing the contours; Zuko didn't protest the action. "I thought you said her face was gone or something, Twinkle Toes. It feels alright to me."

"Visually, it is gone, but it's only disguised," Aang explained. "Try to imagine what it'd be like if you were trying to sense her standing on sand or ice or something. That's what it's like for the rest of us," he concluded, rather miserably.

Toph took a moment to consider those variables, and when she spoke, there was an edge of timidity in her voice. "But Katara's going to be fine, right? I mean, she's Katara. She's, you know, tough. I'll give her that."

Zuko smiled, faint and fleeting, at that speech. The use of the waterbender's actual name was enough of a giveaway, but the comment at the end was Toph's equivalent of a standing ovation. Somewhere beneath the fog of worry that was so thick it manifested itself as physical nausea, he was truly touched by this show of support and concern for his wife. Koh had just about picked the worst person on earth to mess with.

"Katara _is_ tough," Sokka agreed, peering up from his hands at his sister's still form, more than a hint of pride in his tone. "But…how much does toughness matter here?"

"Toughness always matters," the earthbender declared confidently, as if thinking otherwise was for lesser people.

Aang grimaced and hunched over in his chair, fingers lacing tightly. "I don't know, to tell the truth. All I know is I can't fight Koh directly—and not because I couldn't as the Avatar," he added swiftly. "It's just…I've seen Koh before. When he takes your soul, it manifests itself as a face, like a mask, and he switches between them as he pleases. So I take that to mean that he carries the souls around inside him. And if I hurt him, I don't know that I can guarantee that I won't be hurting her as well. We simply can't risk fighting Koh, not traditionally, anyway. Even if we can get there, I don't know what we'll do."

A silence followed that hopeless pronouncement, a silence broken, rather unsurprisingly, by Toph.

"Well, we'll figure that out when we get there, right, Twinkle Toes, Sparky?" she said with an unbothered shrug.

Zuko merely glanced at her sidelong, but it was Aang's expression that notably objected.

"There's no bending in the Spirit World," the Avatar explained. "Without earthbending, you can't see. No offense, and I really mean no offense, but you'll _really_ be blind. And…sorta…"

Toph swung her forefinger in his face, nearly jabbing him in the eye. "If you say _helpless_, Twinkle Toes, I'll rip your tongue out, Avatar or not. And if it turns out that I'm really blind, as you insist, we'll figure that out when it comes, too. No point wondering about things we know nothing about right now."

"The best course of action _is_ a course of action," Iroh advised mysteriously.

Zuko didn't have the heart to roll his eyes, and everyone was already shifting their focus to Hakoda, who had stopped pacing and was now standing behind his son's couch.

"I have considerable battle experience," the chief said. "I would like to accompany you as well, Avatar, and offer my knowledge when the time for fighting comes." He was, it seemed, entirely reluctant to let go of the idea of a full-blown bloodbath.

Before either Zuko or Aang could say anything, Sokka interrupted them, as quiet and hoarse as ever. "No, Dad," he said simply. "You're staying here."

Hakoda looked down at his son in tempered bewilderment. "What? Why?"

Sokka made a pitiful gesture in Katara's direction. "Someone will need to take care of her, right? Aang said something about her body being alive, so we'll need to feed her and stuff. Suki and I can do that, _will_ do that. And," he continued, much more quietly now, "when Mom died, you left, and all I had was Katara. Now Katara's gone, too, and you can't…you can't…" He choked on the words, perhaps unable to utter them with an audience, perhaps incapable of saying them at all.

Hakoda's expression softened, even those his angular features prevented him from appearing too affected by Sokka's almost-plea. "I understand, son," he replied. "It would be best for our family to stick together. We will protect her body, so you must retrieve her soul," he concluded, looking at Aang and Zuko in turn.

"I will die before I give up," Zuko said tonelessly, and he would have been inaudible except for the overwhelming silence that had swamped the room. Each word was carefully pronounced, attesting to the strength of his determination, and he curled her unconscious form even more into his chest.

Aang rose and offered the Water Tribe Chief a bow. "On my word as the Avatar, I promise to bring her back."

Hakoda nodded at them both in acknowledgment, his face grave once more.

"We should set out in the morning, then," the Avatar mused out loud. "I imagine it'd be easiest just to take Appa. The North Pole's pretty far and all, but we should be there in less than a week. Zuko, if you could scrape some supplies together, that'd be good."

"I'm not running errands," Toph dismissed. "I'm just along for a good ol' Spirit World ass-kicking."

"Good thing I didn't ask you," Aang grumbled before addressing the group. "We should get some sleep then, especially those of us who'll be going. Morning isn't really that far away anymore."

There were murmurs of assent and a few final plans, and then the chamber emptied out until only Iroh and Zuko remained, Katara still clutched tightly in the latter's arms. The elder firebender reheated his tea and took a slow sip, observing his nephew over the rim. He was accustomed to the Fire Lord displaying heated emotion, anger or otherwise, and it was deeply disturbing to be confronted with this silent, unfocused Zuko.

"You and the Avatar are strong and clever," he offered at length. "You have prevailed against mightier odds than this. I believe that this time will be no different."

Zuko's brow pinched a little more. "Even though I found my mother, there was still nothing I could do. Agni, if this ends like that…"

"It will not," Iroh said bracingly, placing a sturdy hand on Zuko's shoulder. "If I should be the one needing rescue, I would feel the safest knowing that you and Aang and Toph were on my trail. Wherever she is, Katara should be secure with that fact."

He grimaced, handsome features twisting. "Wherever she is," he echoed, almost scathingly. "She should be _right here_, Uncle. She…she is right here…I…" He trailed off, bowing his head and ducking into the shelter of her shoulder, forehead pressed against her upper arm. Tears seared his eyes anew and made small damp splotches on her sleeve.

"I could sit with you until dawn," Iroh offered gently, watching the younger firebender with much concern.

"No," Zuko croaked, drawing her limp form as close as physically possible, and even then he endeavored to hold her tighter. "I want to be alone with my wife."

With her body turned the way it was, Iroh could almost pretend that Katara was perfectly fine, what with the lack of evidence to the contrary. But even more glaringly out of place than her featureless face was her lack of reaction to Zuko's clear agony. Iroh knew that if Katara had been fine, she never would have stayed immobile in his arms and let him suffer like this. Her stillness was nearly the most distressing truth.

But the rotund man simply rose to his feet and tucked his hands into his sleeves. "Then I take my leave, Lord Zuko. I will be here in the morning, and I will carefully watch over your Lady."

The scarred man made no response, not even looking up when the door closed behind his uncle. The silence of the chamber suddenly weighed heavily on him, but what was heaviest of all was the reality that he was, indeed, alone.

For the second time that night, he hugged Katara to him and cried until he had no more tears to shed. And even then, dry sobs continued to wrack his lean frame, and he rocked back and forth like a distraught child.

"Please, Katara," he begged, his voice cracked in a dozen places. "Agni, please just come back…"

But she simply lay, unmoving and unheeding, in his arms.

* * *

In the darkness, Katara sits.

She does nothing, yet she cannot describe herself as bored. There may be nothing to do here—she has paced, she has been still—but there is no consistent time, either. She has no breaths to count, no sleeping and waking that could keep some sort of schedule. Sometimes she thinks that it would be nice to sleep, if only to spend some time outside of this black oblivion, but she eventually concludes that it would be purposeless; time is nonexistent, so as soon as her eyelids shut, they would open again.

In the beginning, right after her arrival in the abyss, she calls for Zuko, even though he is clearly not here and probably cannot hear her in any event. After the sound of his name fades in her ears, she feels foolish and somewhat ashamed, as if seeking help were a sign of unforgiveable weakness. Thinking about him, though, and forcing herself to realize that he is not present and that she is alone does not do her composure any favors, and she sternly shoves such imaginings from her mind. She cannot think of him at all, not if she hopes to be more than a shuddering ball on the floor.

She tries once to waterbend but finds that she is incapable. At first it did not occur to her, as there are no obvious sources of water, but when she attempts to bend her own fluids, nothing happens. She is not entirely certain that is because she cannot bend; after all, her heart is not beating, her blood not pumping, so why should she have blood at all? It might be idly filling her veins, or it might be as absent as everything else.

It occurs to her at length that she is not clothed; this reality does not particularly upset her, given the lack of other people, but when she absently contemplates her regular blue robe, she finds that it is suddenly gracing her form. It exhibits the same lack of shadows as her skin, but otherwise it is ordinary; the fabric feels right beneath her fingers, and it is tailored to her exactly. There is even the small burn on the left sleeve from the time she and Zuko were mock sparring and his best effort grazed her shoulder. She pats it distractedly, glad for something familiar, and realizes that her earlier conclusion was accurate: the mind is truly powerful here, mere thoughts conjuring tangible realities.

…Of course, the term _reality_ must be taken with a grain of salt.

She leans back on her hands and stares morosely into the void when something begins to change.

It is gradual and difficult to discern, and at first she does not believe she is really looking at anything. But at length the vague generalizations coalesce into something solid, a bizarre sort of impression in the black surroundings, as if someone were trying to walk through a wall of tightly stretched plastic wrap. Abruptly, the darkness gives way, and a woman steps into Katara's vicinity as if emerging from a fog.

The newly crowned Fire Lady leaps to her feet, instinctively assuming a bending stance even though she knows that she cannot bend anything here. Her visitor, though, does not express the same surprise; the woman simply stands there and blinks slowly at Katara, giving the impression that she has never seen anything quite like the waterbender.

Katara forces herself to relax; while being hostile is perhaps a more survival-prone reaction, this woman does not appear to pose any sort of threat. She observes the other in a quick once-over. Her coloring and clothes identify her immediately as a member of the Water Tribe, but the style of her robe seems different, more different than the shifts in fashion from Southern Tribe to Northern. It seems…older, somehow. Her dark hair falls almost to her waist in loose waves, and she is strikingly beautiful, but in a soft kind of way, forcing the mind to conclude that this is a woman who could never harm anybody and would simply be the kindest, gentlest person.

She blinks again at Katara, her gray-blue eyes expressing no visible emotion, not even confusion.

Katara swallows but smiles. "Um…hi, there. I'm Katara, Southern Tribe."

The woman studies her, her head cocking slightly to one side, as if she has never encountered such a language before. But eventually her brow furrows faintly, and she offers, "Ummi. My name is Ummi."

She does not sound entirely confident, but Katara dismisses that—if this Ummi has been here for any length of time, she would be disorientated. The Fire Lady smiles again, more reassuringly, and nods in acknowledgement. "It's nice to meet you. I'm really happy to see someone else; I'd thought I was the only one here. Have you been here long?"

It takes Ummi awhile to absorb all that information, but Katara doesn't think it is a case of blatant stupidity. Perhaps she has been here so long—even though time makes no sense, it still has to pass in some fashion, right?—that she has given up regular human actions from sheer lack of use. Finally she murmurs, "Long…have I been here long…I…" She frowns, marring her forehead more than her lips. "I don't know, truthfully. It is…hazy."

Katara wonders if it would be best to steer the conversation to happier waters, so she says, "Which tribe are you from? I don't recognize the style of your clothing."

Ummi glances down at herself, as if she has forgotten what she is wearing. "I…think I traveled." She frowns, more deeply, and continues at length. "I met the Avatar, and we…we were to wed in the North Pole…perhaps I am from the Northern Tribe, after all."

Katara perks up at this revelation. "You know an Avatar? I know an Avatar! That's a crazy coincidence. My Avatar, Aang, is an airbender. I was actually his waterbending teacher. Who was yours? Er, is yours?" she corrects, not entirely certain the past tense means anything in this black void.

"Kuruk, a Water Avatar," Ummi replies, and she clearly warms to the subject. "He's wonderful. Very handsome and very charming. I am a lucky woman." Her smile slips, and she glances around, like a person who swears she has set some small possession down _right here_ and is now bemused to find it missing. "I…I do not know where he is," she admits after several moments, distress flitting across her face before she shakes her head vaguely and banishes it. She refocuses on Katara. "Are you betrothed?" she inquires, continuing the conversation as if it had never taken a different twist.

The waterbender grins. "Just married."

Ummi's expression softens, her eyes curving happily. "Oh, congratulations! How lovely. Did you marry your Avatar, this airbender?"

"Aang? No," Katara dismisses with a nonchalant wave. "Actually, I married the Fire Lord."

She is initially surprised that Ummi expresses no bewilderment at this fact, but then she realizes that this woman existed pre-war and so has no particular grievances with Zuko's nation. The mere thought of her husband causes her immobile heart to ache, and she wishes that this subject had not come up.

"Fire Lord? Was it a political marriage?" Ummi inquires curiously, drawing Katara back to the matter at hand.

She considers for a moment. "Well, in some ways, it's advantageous politically, but it wasn't arranged like that. Zuko and I…we just…" She shrugs disarmingly and smiles a close-lipped smile. "We just love each other."

Ummi smiles as well, seeming pleased with that. "I was fortunate to escape an arranged marriage myself," she replies, though her eyes dim at the thought of her absent fiancé. "How did you ever meet the Fire Lord, though?"

Katara laughs, unable to help herself. That question invites a longer explanation than the other woman could have possibly anticipated. "Zuko was the Avatar's firebending teacher," she decides to say. That is true, after all.

"Ah. So you met because of the Avatar?" Ummi surmises.

She half-laughs again in amusement. "Well, yeah, sorta," she admits. "Really, if you want the whole epic tale, it'll take quite some time to tell…"

The other woman shrugs, ambivalent. "I have no one else to see and nothing else to do. I would love to hear about your romance."

Katara nearly snorts at terming her and Zuko's initial interaction as anything close to romantic, but she concedes to the idea with a nod and lounges on the black, buoying ground. She is not tired in the slightest from standing, nor would she ever become so, but it feels more natural to sit while storytelling. She kneels, rocking back on her heels; there is no other way to sit politely, as she never bothered to conjure any clothes other than her robe, leaving her bare-legged and barefoot as well. She is not cold, though; there is no temperature here, or rather, there is only the perfect temperature.

"I suppose the story really starts a hundred years ago," Katara begins musingly. She thought talking about Zuko would depress her, but speaking of this is a welcome distraction, a piece of reality in this unreal abyss. "Back then, the four nations lived together in harmony until the Fire Nation attacked. Aang—he was the Avatar then, too, since he got stuck in this iceberg for that century—he disappeared into that iceberg, and without his defending everyone, the Fire Nation conquered the world. More to the point, though, Zuko was a banished prince and—"

She stops speaking abruptly, her jaw slackening in incredulous horror.

Ummi's face is gone.

The other woman's body does not slump; it retains its position unflinching, apparently not bothered by the sudden lack of one of its parts. And before Katara can even begin to think about screaming or panicking, Ummi's face is back where it belongs, and all she does is blink, unperturbed.

"What the hell was that?" Katara blurts, and when Ummi merely frowns, she adds, "Your face! It—it disappeared!"

"Oh," Ummi says, nodding in understanding. "That happens from time to time. It has not happened to you?"

Katara hurriedly grapples with her face, fearing that it will vanish without a moment's notice. "No," she says, incredulously. "Why would it? Does this have something to do with where we are?"

Ummi shrugs again, completely unflustered. "I don't know, really. All I know is that he is called Koh."

"Who's Koh?" Katara demands, even though something rings familiar about the name. She has heard it before, and yes, the loss of Ummi's face, that's connected…and suddenly she sees the picture the seemingly unrelated lines have formed. Years ago, Aang told her about his journey to the Spirit World, about his encounter with an ancient entity called Koh who…collected people's faces…

So then this place…and her apparent lack of vital signs…

"Is this…_inside_ Koh?" she breathes, looking around in slow horror. "Has he stolen our faces?"

"I don't know where we are," Ummi repeats, "but Koh does borrow my face from time to time. He will probably borrow yours one day. It doesn't hurt; you needn't fret."

"I'll fret all I want!" Katara barks, scrambling to her feet even though she cannot do anything productive once she gets there. "I'm not gonna sit here twiddling my thumbs while some spirit takes my face on and off like some kind of screwed up mask!"

Ummi rises as well, radiating calm. "No, Katara, it is not like that. He is not cruel. Wearing our faces…it allows us to _see_. It takes us from this place, back to a world with color and form."

"Does it take you back to Kuruk?" she snaps, her tone as hard as the ice she bends, as fierce as the fire she balances.

The other woman hesitates. "…No," she admits at length. "But he was always something of a…flirtatious man. He probably has found another, and there is no point in hoping to see him." Her voice is bitter, but only around the edges, and only fleetingly.

Katara barely hears that undercurrent of pain, too focused on her own predicament. "Well, Zuko's not gonna stand for this—oh _hell_ no! And I'm not gonna stand for it, either! I'm finding a way out of this fu—"

Her rant is silenced mid-word, and it is as if her entire being, body and mind, has frozen. She is…_paused_. And her awareness slips, blurring into an indecipherable fog before the world coalesces again. Except now there is no black; there is yellowish light and a gold-tinged cloudy sky above and murky waters below. She looks down and catches sight of her reflection in the nearest shallow pond, and she screams:

_That is not my body!_

But her face does not change. It remains calm, and even though she is frightened beyond belief, she watches her lips curve into a satisfied little smile. And she watches the jointed, insect-like legs bend and straighten, and she dimly hears a quiet clacking sound, the same sound that she heard in the royal suite on her wedding night, but the repetition is not as fervent.

Her face is positioned as the pupil in the eye-like structure serving as this creature's head, and she can see a thick banded body towards the bottom of the reflection before the pond reaches its edge. It looks as if she has been swallowed by some sort of hideous monster, and she now knows this to be true.

A voice that is not her own originates in her mind, syncing perfectly with the movements of her lips.

"Welcome, Katara. Forgive me for not introducing myself sooner."

The words come from all around, and she cringes reflexively at the volume, even as she is sickened and unsettled by the sight of her face disobeying her. The next statement is not a surprise.

"I am…Koh."

* * *


	4. quattro

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**iv.**_

The guards at the Royal Prison stood stiffly to attention as their Fire Lord passed, but Zuko paid them no heed. He came here regularly enough to know the way, and besides, he had other things occupying his mind today than whether his soldiers' armor was buffed to perfection.

He climbed the long spiral stair that stretched from the lowest basement to the highest storey, his footsteps mere soft scrapes of leather on the worn stone. Reaching the midpoint of the tower, he exited into the encircling cellblock and found the prisoner he was looking for.

Azula looked up as he arrived at her bars, but she did not rise from her position on her straw pallet. Zuko had forbid Aang from spiritbending her, or any other method of captivity that would so undignify his sister, and so he'd had to make do with less spectacular measures. She was shackled hand and foot, but not with the usual chains; instead, two separate plates of iron held her wrists and ankles equidistant, effectively and economically preventing her from assuming any bending stance.

While her mind had recovered from her illness, Azula had not had the opportunity to replenish her physical strength. She retained her haggard appearance, appearing thinner than she was because of her naturally delicate features, but now her amber eyes were no longer dull in either sense of the word: they were bright and possessed just an edge of sharpness.

She did not acknowledge him verbally and simply fixed those eyes on him in a familiar expression of bored condescension.

Zuko made no mention of it and barely noticed. He was well aware that his sister was a mere ghost of the conniving princess she'd once been, and that what little attitude she retained was solely a product of spite.

"I came to tell you that I will be gone from the capital for awhile, on…personal business," he said, hesitating only briefly. "Uncle will rule as regent in my absence, and I have taxed him with the responsibility of seeing that you are treated well. Not that he would do otherwise without my insistence, of course."

"Tch," Azula replied from her corner, and her eyes wandered down to the black curl she held in one hand. It was a bundle of hair, the last tangible evidence of their mother. Zuko had visited Azula with admirable frequency, some part of him feeling guilty for putting her here and another part of him simply wishing to see his only sibling, but in any case, he had never seen her without the jet-black lock, no matter how random or unannounced his visits.

It made his heart ache, and he wished again that mother and daughter could have been reunited one last time.

"I'm certain Mai and Ty Lee will continue to see you as well," the Fire Lord continued. He didn't have to say that, as it was an obvious enough fact, but he felt a desire to make small talk.

Azula, though, did not share his inclination to conversation. "Have a nice trip, then, Zuzu. Don't feel obliged to bring me back a souvenir."

"I'm not sure I could, even if I wanted to," Zuko admitted, brushing past her old nickname for him without any sting. He paused, seeking new topics, but found himself empty-handed. Besides, he needed to go. "I will see you when I get back. Agni protect you, Azula."

He had only just turned to go when the disgraced princess spoke up. "I heard the guards talking. Is it true, brother, that you married the arctic peasant?"

His step faltered, and he valiantly fought to keep his shoulders from slumping at the mere mention of his bride. Taking a second to gather his composure, he half-turned to Azula and said, "I married Katara yesterday, yes."

Azula's lip curled, and she slouched back more comfortably into her corner and tilted her head against the wall, doing her best to look down her nose at him. "How dare you mock our bloodline by soiling it with that woman? I should have killed her when I had the chance—I almost did."

Zuko knew it was an empty threat, but that didn't stop his jaw from clenching further. "Watch your words, Azula," he warned in a tight, cold voice.

The firebending prodigy took no heed of the caution. "What would Mother think, Zuzu? To lie with something worse than the scum in this cell? You scorn centuries of tradition!"

"You watch your tongue!" he barked, jabbing an angry finger through the bars at her. "You will not insult Katara, who is your new Fire Lady, by the way, and _you will_ _not use the memory of our mother to do so!_" He yelled the last part, and it echoed dimly off the stone, the only sound that accompanied the heaving of his breath in the silence that followed.

Azula merely stared at him, and her expression would have been nonplussed if there hadn't been just a hint of remorse in her eyes. "Does Father know of this?" she remarked instead, changing the subject slightly.

Zuko strove to control himself, and gradually he felt his fists uncurling. "I did not have him informed. But he may very well have heard the same gossip you did. I can't imagine he would react differently…or better."

She appeared somewhat insulted at that, disliking such an analogy when she had not yet forgiven Ozai for his lifetime of abuse and betrayal. She enunciated her next statement carefully, obviously unwilling to evoke again the ire Zuko had just displayed. "You think it wise, though? To wed a waterbender? The people must object."

"The people will adapt," he snapped, still residually angry. He repeated his mantra again—just breathe: in and out, in and out, in and out—and added, "And I do believe it is wise. This is a new age, Azula. Iron can become brittle and rusted and weak, so I have fortified it with carbon and made steel. You've heard of alloys, I presume? Stronger and better than pure metals, despite being impure?"

The gaunt woman smiled thinly. "Aw, Zuzu, you've mastered the use of metaphor. I am so proud."

He had had enough of this conversation, and more than that, he was aware that he had dawdled longer than he ought. "Mull this over in your free time," he said as he stepped away from the cell once more. "You asked me what Mother would think—but she met Katara, and she approved. Next time I see you, I expect you to speak more kindly of your sister-in-law."

Azula watched him disappear around the curve of the central stairwell, and then she leaned back rather heavily into the wall, as if a great weight had just fallen into her lap. She stared blankly at the stone bricks opposite.

"Sister-in-law…?"

* * *

To suggest that Aang may have slept was to suggest a complete and utter lie, and the Avatar gazed blearily out at the dawn with red-rimmed eyes. Wrapped tightly around his hand, to the point where circulation was interrupted, was the woven necklace he'd made for Katara, all those years ago when she'd lost hers on the shipyard rig. He supposed that maybe he should have gotten rid of it, that hanging on to it was as sentimental and stupid as hoping she'd come running back into his arms, but…

He turned his hand over and caressed the flower with the forefinger of his other hand.

For all he'd been able to get over—the destruction of the airbenders, Zuko's relentless hunting, the guilt of leaving in the middle of a war—why could he not get over her?

His chest constricted on his heart, and tears seared his already-sore eyes.

A knock at the door snapped him into the present, and he scrambled for some measure of composure, but his voice cracked halfway through his nonchalant call of, "Who is it?"

"It is I, General Iroh, Avatar."

Aang heaved a sigh of relief, which was always more pronounced for an airbender, and forced his stiff muscles to allow him to rise and answer the door. Iroh was indeed standing on the other side, a kindly expression on his weathered features, and he was of course holding a pot of tea.

"I thought a little something to pass the time before you depart," the firebender said mysteriously, hefting the teapot and allowing his wrinkles to deepen as he smiled.

"Uh, sure," Aang agreed, stepping back to permit the elder's entrance. Iroh strode past briskly and installed himself happily at the couch, setting the teapot down on the low table and producing a pair of cups and saucers from somewhere within the recesses of his voluminous sleeves. He offered one full cup to Aang, who accepted it rather listlessly, and proceeded to drink his own with gusto.

"I suppose that you are wondering why I am here," Iroh said at length, letting his china cup gently reconnect with its saucer.

Aang glanced up from his unconcerned observance of his purpling fingers, and he absently loosened her necklace. "Eh? Oh, yeah. We really do need to get going soon…"

"But do you know what to do once you reach the North Pole and its oasis?" the elderly man inquired with apparent innocence.

The Avatar's expression marginally worsened, but that was likely because he wasn't expressing anything very strongly besides the very strong projection of absolute gloom. "…No," he admitted at length, a bit sullenly. "But I've always had to think on my feet before, so I figure that…well, maybe if I…" He trailed off with a weak little laugh. "Yeah, right. As if I'll be able to come up with a miraculous way to transfer living people to the Spirit World and back. Way to dream, Aang."

Iroh smiled in a very secretive manner. "That is why I have come, Avatar. For I have traveled to the Spirit World and back, and—"

"You've _what_?" Aang burst, and he had to swiftly recover his tea, which he'd nearly flung skyward from his astonishment. "How on earth is that possible?

The former general chuckled and sipped more steaming liquid. "Listen well, Avatar, and I believe this will all turn out for the best."

* * *

"Welcome to my domain, precious one of the Avatar," Koh says in his silky smooth voice.

Katara shudders at the sight of her own lips shaping the words, but she is given pause by the sentiment, and if she could have wrinkled her brow, it would have crumpled considerably. "Wait…precious one of the Avatar?" she echoes, the confusion clear in her voice and edging out her fear. "Are you saying Aang's somehow…_involved_ in this?"

The spirit chuckles, a low, rolling sound almost like a purr. "Of course. You are his precious one, the one he hates the most to lose, the one whose loss will hurt him the deepest. The Avatar loves you, but now you are gone, and that arrogant hybrid spirit is suffering the acutest of agonies."

Koh's sadistic tone unnerves the waterbender beyond description, but she unflinching pursues her line of inquiry. "You've got it all wrong—so much for being an all-knowing spirit! Aang doesn't love me, and I don't love him. I'm married to the Fire Lord, for Twi's sake!"

But the spirit only laughs louder, and she watches her face laugh along with it, and she has never imagined that she could look so vindictively smug. "So the Avatar, in all his glory, has succumbed to such a human failing as lusting after another man's wife? Oh, this is more than I had hoped for! He not only suffers the pain of your loss but the humility of never having you in the first place! This is such a more satisfying revenge than my previous attempt, you truly cannot comprehend how much so."

Previous attempt? Katara wonders in the safety of her mind—if there is such a thing here, when even her soul is not safe—but she does not voice such a question aloud. Instead she asks, "You did this all to hurt Aang?"

"_Aang_ happens to be the Avatar's current vessel," Koh clarifies, sounding supremely bored and dismissive. "I did this all to hurt the Avatar. It is an unnatural being: human and spirit, mortal and immortal. The rest of us have to choose one existence or the other, but the wonderful Avatar gets to have it all. But now…now he is finally lacking. He is lacking you. And such an absence causes him more anguish than any other punishment."

She tries not to feel too guilty; being used as a weapon, though, is fast making her regret interacting with Aang at all, even though she knows that is utterly illogical. She wishes that she could somehow convince this cruel spirit that she is not so important to the Avatar as to be wielded in this manner, but even as she fleetingly entertains the idea, she knows that cannot be declared, not with any truth.

She had thought that Aang's admiration and affection had faded in the year since they drifted apart, but it is clear that is not so.

"It has been quite a while since I added such a beautiful face to my collection," Koh says, almost musingly. "You may be quite fortunate."

Inwardly, she scowls, but her expression remains mildly contemplative. "How in hell does any of this add up to being fortunate?" she spits scathingly.

Koh's body bends closer to the water's surface until Katara almost thinks that she can see herself looking out of her own eyes, a reflection within a reflection. Slowly, thinly, her lips curve in a smile.

"I shall wear your face often, love of the Avatar. And I will especially relish the moment when I display this mask to him in person—to see you here, like this! Oh, the agony will increase tenfold!" the spirit practically crows in victory.

But then, suddenly, there is darkness once more, and Katara looks about wildly, disorientated. She is back in the void; Koh must have ceased using her face. She paws at her features, grateful beyond belief to feel their familiar contours, and slumps back on the non-ground with a sigh. It is only after a moment that she notices Ummi is nowhere to be found.

It does not truly matter, though.

She has been alone all along.

* * *

The trackless ocean rolled away far beneath Appa's flight, and only traces of clouds interrupted the utterly blue horizon. On the bison's back, the three benders occupied their usual seats: Aang on Appa's furry head, reins in hand and expression grim; Toph in the saddle and clinging tightly to the side, although feigning nonchalance as best she could; and Zuko across from her, cross-legged and hunched over with his head in his hands.

Toph rolled her sightless eyes. "Oh, for the spirits' sakes, Sparky, spit it out already!"

It took Zuko a moment to realize she was speaking to him, and a moment longer to process what she'd said. When that had occurred, though, his expression betrayed no comprehension. "Er…what?"

The earthbender lifted one of her legs and waggled her bare toes in the Fire Lord's general direction. "I can see your gears spinning—obviously something's on your mind. I wouldn't normally ask, but the vibrations are beginning to piss me off, so out with it."

He didn't answer right away, looking back at where they'd come from—at the Fire Nation, at the palace, at Katara. And when he spoke, he failed to turn his face to Toph, still straining for some impossible glimpse. "Back…when I lost my mother…" He shook his head. "It was the worst moment of my life. I had…never felt so much pain, not even when my father burned me. I didn't really know how I'd go on, but Katara, she…" His throat swelled and choked off his voice, and he needed to swallow before he could continue.

"She promised me that…that nothing would ever happen to her," he concluded in a hoarse rasp. "So that I'd never have to hurt like that again. But now…now she's…"

Toph listened to that in silence, and when Zuko clearly could speak no longer, she remarked with practiced boredom, "Well, that's an awfully stupid thing to promise."

The firebender finally looked at her, his eyes as raw as his voice. "What do you mean by that?" he asked, husky and quiet, but not yet offended.

The young woman shrugged. "Something was bound to happen to her eventually, right? I mean, shit happens to everyone. I can't imagine you saw this particular thing coming, but really…it's not like it's a freshly broken promise or anything. Tons of stuff has happened to her since your mom passed. She married you, for instance."

On Appa's head, Aang eavesdropped, feeling like a worse and worse human being with every passing moment. To think that this was his fault, in some way or another, for not letting go of her when he should have…

"And she probably meant something else by it in the first place," Toph went on, briefly disengaging one hand to wave it as if swatting a bothersome fly. "I wouldn't pretend to know _what_, since sappiness is not my strong suit, but it'd probably be something like…oh, I dunno…like she'd love you anyway, or something." She shrugged again, affecting too much casual disinterest to be wholly sincere.

Zuko stared blankly at her for a long while, blinking occasionally. And then he smiled, albeit wanly and only for a moment. "Thank you," he offered.

"Whatever, Sparky," the earthbending master dismissed.

* * *

In the darkness, Katara thinks.

She doesn't have much else to do, after all, so she focuses all her concentration on trying to unravel the mystery of Koh. She is not terribly confused by the spirit's vendetta—vengeance hardly ever needs a logical reason, and she understands that trying to get to the bottom of that particular mystery won't help in the long run.

No, Katara wonders why Koh is Koh at all…why someone would steal faces, steal souls.

From what she gathered while being his face, Koh is not human in appearance, not even remotely. And yet he would hoard humanoid faces? If anything, he should seek to steal the faces off very large, very nasty insects. Perhaps a lobster or two. But humans?

Rising to her bare feet, she paces a bit on the nonexistent ground, humming softly to herself as she works through her very limited information. At length, she is forced to admit that she does not possess the necessary knowledge, but she is certainly not the only one here, so…

"Ummi!" she calls into the darkness, hands cupped around her mouth, more out of habit than to make the sound carry. "Ummi, you around? I want to ask you something!"

The sound does not fade into the abyss so much as it is absorbed, and Katara is about to give up hope when the blackness stretches again. Ummi emerges as if from a cellophane sheet, and she looks curiously at Katara.

"Ah, you are back," she says, clearly referring to the Fire Lady's lack of face earlier. "I did not mean to stray, but sometimes Koh takes his faces for a long time."

"That's alright," Katara dismisses, hardly caring about that. "I wanted to know if you knew anything about Koh, besides the fact that he stole both our faces."

Ummi shrugs, an economical movement. "I do not know much. There are many of us here, but it can be hard to find them. Sometimes you only just stumble across another. From what others have told me, if Koh takes your face the normal way—instead of total abduction from the physical world—it is because you showed him expression."

As if to prove a point, Katara wrinkles her brow. "Expression?" she echoes. "That's…weird. Why would a spirit care if you showed expression or not? And why would he take your face as punishment?"

The other woman tucks her hands into the opposite sleeves and gives her head a slight shake. "That I cannot tell you," she replies.

"I wonder if something happened to him," the waterbender muses. "After all, what's Koh's actual face like? He must have had one sometime, but…hmm…" She trails off into thoughtful silence, pondering this new diversion, and then asks, "About how many of us would you say there are?"

Ummi considers for a moment. "At least a dozen. There are undoubtedly more whom I have just not encountered."

"And Koh has to wear one of us at all times," she goes on softly, tapping her fingers on her chin.

"What are you trying to say?"

Katara makes a vague motion with her hand. "I'm…not entirely sure. I might be onto something, but then again, it could just be a wild turtle-duck chase…"

Because she thinks that if there are dozens of souls here, perhaps they might have some sort of power. If Koh switches between their faces, perhaps they can resist. And if they resist, what will Koh be left with?

She does not know if any of this is possible; she knows that having her face worn is an unnerving but mostly an unstoppable event.

Katara knows, however, that she will do her damnedest to try.


	5. cinque

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**v.**_

Katara lays on her back, staring up at the darkness above her, which—for the sake of her sanity—she has begun thinking of as the ceiling. She has certainly been staring at it for hours, but as before, she does not become bored, and no matter how hard she stares at it, she can perceive no patterns, no movements in the abyss. It is not like velvet at all, not like shadowed water or stone. It is simply…darkness.

Her body jerks, her habitual inhalation abruptly halted, and color and shape swim before her eyes once more. This is partially why she has spent her time just lying on her back—true to Koh's promise, he has worn her face often, so much so that she hasn't wanted to stand up, only to have her face stolen and her body to fall down.

Not like she is certain that would _hurt_, or even that her body would fall. Ummi wasn't affected in the slightest, after all, when her face was stolen. Still, though, old habits are hard to break.

Like living, Katara thinks grimly, observing this murky golden world again.

"Your thoughts are quiet, love of the Avatar," Koh says, and while the spirit is no longer bent over the pond, she knows her lips are shaping his words. Despite the repetition and the familiarity that should have come with it, she is still unspeakably appalled by that reality—that her own face has betrayed her.

"I really don't have much to think about," she finally responds. And then, wondering what might happen if she provokes him, she adds, "It's terribly boring here. Neither your inside nor your out is particularly interesting. I mean, what's with this hazy place anyway? Couldn't you be somewhere prettier? This is the Spirit World, right—land of limitless opportunity, where thoughts have true power, and—"

Katara coughs reflexively, eyes wide as she stares up at the black ceiling once more. She places a hand on her chest, her heart pounding out of habit, and exhales a sigh. "I guess that's what happens when Koh—"

And then there is sunlight again, and gnarled trees and lakes, and her head swims sickeningly from the sudden retrieval. She recovers by reminding herself that she doesn't have much of a stomach to feel nauseated with—although that in and of itself is not the best thought—and listens to Koh's voice echoing in her head.

"Know your place, Fire Lady Katara, formerly of the Water Tribe!" he snarls, scurrying up the side of a gigantic dead tree. "I am the mighty Koh, and you are my merest puppet! I have claimed your soul and your face, and your expressions are _mine_! I will be the one who dictates what you are allowed to see and feel! You will not question my decisions or authority! _You will not!_"

If it's possible, she muses, I believe I struck a nerve. "So sorry, Mister Koh," she sneers in reply. "I guess I was just surprised that the landscape is as ugly as you are."

Without much surprise this time, Katara finds herself back in the darkness, and she levers herself up onto her elbow and glances about the void. There is nothing there, as usual, and she rises into a seated position, loosely crossing her legs and balancing her chin in hand. Half-expecting Koh to steal her back at any moment, she nevertheless marshals her thoughts and begins to think.

Koh is an ancient spirit—she remembers that much from Aang. As ancient as the Avatar, he had said. And Koh resents the Avatar for being…well, the Avatar. Someone who can travel between the worlds, someone whose immortality is composed of a thousand mortal generations, someone who…

Someone who…

Katara frowns deeply as she stumbles across that realization. Someone who changes their face?

She lets out an incredulous laugh. Koh could not be _jealous_, could he? By acquiring different faces and souls, is he attempting to live like the Avatar lives, multiple times in multiple forms? Does he resent the Avatar for being able to come and go as he pleases, not trapped in this murky hell where no other spirit would venture? Is this all just an elaborate scheme to make the Avatar pay for his freedom?

How petty, she thinks with a shake of her head. To think that such powerful spirits fall prey to such human failings. It is pathetic. She will have to remember to let Koh know that the next time she sees him.

And what did Koh mean, she continues to muse, about controlling her expressions? Obviously he can do so literally, as he possesses her face, but she wonders if there is some undercurrent she's unaware of. What exactly had Koh said? That he claimed both her soul _and_ her face? Strange that he differentiated between the two; previously she had been led to believe that they were one in the same for the spirit, but…if they are separate entities…

He controls her facial expressions, but what are the expressions of the soul? Emotions? Beliefs? Why would Koh want those as well?

She shakes her head, unable to piece these wayward bits together into anything resembling order. She will simply have to wait and see.

Katara slouches back in the darkness, no longer so afraid of the shadows.

* * *

"Are we there yet?" Toph complained, huddling deeper into the thick Water Tribe blanket they'd had the presence of mind to bring along. "It's getting really cold! We must be there by now!"

Aang swallowed an annoyed groan. "Almost, Toph," he grumbled.

"I mean, there's ice everywhere! It's absolutely freezing! How are you guys standing this?" she continued bitterly, glaring as much she could at the two men.

Zuko made no reply, although he was routinely exhaling small bits of flame, a testament to the firebending that was keeping him warm. Aang was probably doing the same, but he made no reply either, his attention suddenly distracted by the impressive snow-wall that fronted the Northern Water Tribe.

"Finally," he muttered under his breath, and Appa growled in protest as his master requested more speed with a flick of the reins. The sky bison managed to increase its pace, though, and they soared over the wall and above the city proper, causing quite a ruckus amongst the citizens below.

Zuko glanced over the edge of the saddle, recalling that fateful day long ago when he had been here with Aang at the Spirit Oasis…when he had been there with Katara, too, although not in a way he would have liked anymore. That had been, he recalled, the first time he had ever really acknowledged her as her own person, as her own threat. She had just been that girl who hung around with the Avatar before then.

He gritted his teeth. The irony could just about kill him.

"So are we there?" Toph demanded, obviously unable to make such a determination.

"Yes," Zuko answered softly for Aang, who seemed about ready to bite the earthbender's head off. "We're there."

"Thank you, Sparky," she said loudly, making it clear that the Avatar was on the receiving end of absolutely none of her gratitude. "When can I get off this thing?"

Appa growled again, and she hastily amended, "When can I get off this pleasant beast, who is certain to want to nap?"

The bison made a much more satisfied sound, and Toph contained a sigh of relief. She had never liked Appa, seeing as how he couldn't be conveniently earthbent, and she was peripherally afraid that the bison was aware of that and only biding its time until it ejected her into space. When her universe lurched as the beast touched down, she leapt off its back, only to encounter something almost as unpleasant.

"Snow?" she queried, the cold setting in even more fiercely on her bare feet. "No one said there was gonna be snow!"

Aang watched her hop about with a raised eyebrow. "This is the North Pole," he stated. "What did you expect?"

Zuko sighed quietly and disembarked as well, walking over to the unhappy earthbender. "Here," he offered. "Climb on my back. I'll carry you to the Oasis, or at least to the nearest boot shop."

"No boots," she warned, although she did clamber onto his back. "I'd be just as blind wearing them as I would with frostbitten feet, anyway. I'm afraid you'll have to be my eyes for the time being, Sparky."

Aang patted Appa's fluffy head absently. "Hopefully he won't have to be your eyes in the Spirit World."

"Yeah, yeah. Shut up, Twinkle Toes," she dismissed.

No one had approached the sky bison or its passengers as of yet; Aang had landed his mount on the innermost edge of the city, so as to most easily access the Oasis. But as Aang secured the reins to Appa's horns, he saw a contingent of navy-robed people approaching, and he recognized the foremost.

"Chief Arnook," he greeted, bowing deeply. "I apologize for this unexpected visit, but our need is most urgent and also rather unorthodox, I'm afraid."

The middle-aged man smiled, returning the bow. "No visit from the Avatar is ever unwanted. I see you have brought the Fire Lord and Sifu Toph as well." He hesitated, glancing around the bison, and then added, "I do not see Sifu Katara. Is she not with you? I had hoped to speak with her the next time she was here. In fact, I had been about to dispatch a messenger requesting her presence."

Aang and Zuko exchanged a glance, both of their expressions falling into something pained and hollow.

"I'm afraid Katara is why we're here," the airbender admitted, aware that Zuko wasn't articulate enough to reply.

Arnook's brow furrowed. "So this is not a matter of state? And if she is not with you, then…?" He shook his head to emphasize his confusion.

Aang sighed and ran a hand back along his arrow tattoo. "Long story short, Katara's soul was taken by a vengeful spirit, and we need to get to the Spirit World to get her back. I thought that, based upon Avatar Kuruk's loss, the best way would be via the Oasis."

The Northern Chief blinked as he weathered that avalanche of information, and at length he cleared his throat. "Oh. Well. That is urgent. And quite unorthodox. I do hope she will be alright; she is an accomplished master and invaluable to our needs. But anyway. I will show you directly to the Oasis, of course. Follow me."

Toph was unaware of most everything, just knowing that Zuko's body swayed as he walked along, and she wondered if she could sense with earthbending by using his body as the conduit, but then her hopes were dashed as she realized he was also walking on the hard-packed snow and would offer no new information. She resigned herself to ignorance until he stopped moving and lowered her from his back. Suddenly, the world appeared before her again, and she wiggled her toes in the grass and laughed aloud, startling Chief Arnook.

"It's good to be back, baby!" she crowed in delight, flopping onto her back and making grass angels. "Nothing like good hard earth to make your day!"

The chief continued watching her in bemusement as she rolled around gleefully, but he pulled his attention back to the matter at hand soon enough. "Well, Avatar, here you go. Is there anything else you shall need?"

Aang shook his head. "Not at the moment, sir. Although I would appreciate if you would have someone monitor our bodies once we've passed over to the Spirit World."

The tribesman nodded. "I'll arrange for that immediately. Good luck to you, Avatar, Fire Lord."

Zuko acknowledged that with a mere nod, too preoccupied with absorbing his surroundings. He had been to the North Pole again, working on treaties and trade agreements, but he had not been to the Oasis proper since that day so long ago. He thought it might have changed, but it was exactly as he remembered, and somehow that made it worse. The red shrine, the little bridges, the circular pond with the dancing koi, the waterfall that came from the surrounding ice cliffs…it was all exactly the same. He half-expected to see a young Katara slipping into a battle stance…

He slid numbly to his knees at the pond's edge, his unfocused gaze eventually latching onto the ocean and moon spirits as they endlessly revolved. It had been this water that had healed Aang after Azula's lightning attack, this water that Katara had offered to him in the catacombs of Ba Sing Se…He reached out a tentative finger and touched the surface, but it felt like any normal water. It didn't feel like it could wash a scar away.

He had no malice against the mark anymore, and saw no need for Katara or anyone else to remove it. It was just so strange to be here with the supplies to do so and not the means, as she was far far away and no use to anyone.

His hand curled into an impotent fist. Agni above, they _had _to be able to get her back!

"So what is your plan, anyway, Aang?" he asked, raising veiled eyes to the airbender.

Aang appeared to wince at his agonized expression, but he nodded in a businesslike fashion all the same. "Yes. Alright, I need both of you to come over here and sit with me," he declared, seating himself in his usual meditative pose at the water's edge. Toph ceased her enjoyment of dirt and Zuko dragged himself to his feet, and they took up positions on either side of the Avatar; Toph lounged carelessly, her weight back on her hands and her legs sprawled in a most unladylike fashion, and Zuko knelt rigidly, his fisted hands balanced on his thighs.

The monk cleared his throat. "I spoke to General Iroh, as he has crossed to the Spirit World before, and he said it was a fairly simple process, even for regular people, albeit one with consequences."

"What kind of consequences?" the Fire Lord asked, his voice brittle. He didn't really care, as he would do this no matter what, but curiosity had thrown him a bone.

Aang shrugged. "Nothing serious. According to Iroh, you will retain an awareness of the Spirit World; apparently he could see Roku's dragon, along with other spiritual creatures inhabiting this world. I imagine it is due to the fact that you forcibly break the barrier between the two realms, so that it doesn't completely close ever again. Until, you know, you die, of course," he added, rather more somberly.

"Skip to the end, Twinkle Toes," Toph drawled, tilting her head back to stare sightlessly at the sky.

He appeared briefly miffed, but relented. "Okay. Iroh said all he did was go to an intensely spiritual place and meditate. As long as you concentrate on it fiercely enough and sincerely enough, you should be able to separate your awareness from your physical form and become aware solely on a spiritual level. Once you've done that, to facilitate your journey, you should direct yourselves into the water, which will act as a portal of sorts."

Toph frowned and wiggled a finger in her ear. "You're gonna have to run that by me again."

Aang sighed and turned to face her. Zuko was peripherally aware that he'd begun speaking again, in a much more frustrated tone than before, but he wasn't paying them any attention. He was too busy slipping into his firebender's mantra, focusing only on the breath and clearing his mind. It went blank with surprising ease, and he reached out mentally towards the spirits in the pond, towards the enormous energy he was now aware they emitted.

It called to him in waves, sloshing at his edges like the surf against the shore, and he realized distantly that the koi were decorated in the patterns of yin and yang for more than just symbolic reasons. He truly needed to achieve balance between the physical and spiritual, between his body and soul. His usual relationship between the two was weighted heavily towards the corporeal, and he needed to shift that, to become less a part of this world, to ease into the next…

He felt his awareness of his body dim, as if he were falling asleep, but his mind remained sharp and clear. He could see things, despite the fact his eyelids were shut, but nothing that he would normally see—none of the cliffs or water or his friends. Only the koi glowed bright and blue, endlessly circling and pulling him in, as if they managed to create their own gravity. He floated towards them, drawn in, and felt himself achieving that precarious balance between the two worlds, that knife's edge of half body, half soul.

It was an interesting place to be, he realized. But he had no time to waste, and so he willingly stepped off the other side, into the emptiness between the swirling koi, into the unending _blue_.

Zuko's head nodded forwards onto his chest, and the motion brought Aang and Toph from their bickering. They stared at the Fire Lord for a moment, and then Aang quickly checked his friend's vital signs.

"Oh, wow. He made that look easy," the tattooed monk said, confirming Zuko's absence from this plane of existence.

Toph just scowled. "Of course he did."

* * *

Slowly, Zuko opens his eyes.

This is certainly not the North Pole any longer. He is in a meadow, a rolling and golden-grassed meadow that extends in every direction as far as he can see. Some ways off, there is a large tree, whose branches spread far and wide from its trunk and are thick with leaves; even from this distance, Zuko can hear the wind soughing in those leaves, a sound which combines pleasantly with the eternal susurration of the grass.

"Is this the Spirit World?" he asks out loud, not expecting an answer and nearly jumping out of his skin when he receives one.

"Yes. I did not expect to see you here so soon, or in this state, my great-grandson."

Zuko spins around, and an elderly man dressed in firebender's robes stands before him, even though the Fire Lord had until recently been utterly alone. He scrutinizes the man, from the kind and paternal expression to the familiar crown on his topknot.

"Avatar Roku?"

He smiles in reply. "Yes. Like I said, I am surprised to see you here. Where is Aang? He must have helped you cross over in this manner, wherein you retain your mortal body."

Zuko glances around and shrugs. "I guess he's not here yet. Toph was having some trouble, so he must've stayed behind to help her."

It is Roku's turn to study Zuko, and there is a wisdom in his amber eyes, and an empathy. "Touch your scar, Zuko."

"What, why?" he asks, startled by the request.

Roku's smile becomes, somehow, more sincere. "Do as I say."

Confused, Zuko raises his hand anyway and brings it to the left side of his face. And he nearly collapses to his knees when the ridged and rumpled flesh is no longer there. He looks around wildly, desperate for visual confirmation, and realizes he is now standing on the edge of a pond. Crouching down, he peers at his reflection, even going so far as to lift his shaggy hair out of the way.

He cannot deny this, though. His scar is gone.

"H-How—?" he asks incompletely, tears welling in his eyes. Was it because he went into the Oasis water?

"Your body here is not your true corporeal form," Roku explains gently. "The wounds inflicted upon it do not appear in your soul, in much the same way that wounds inflicted on your soul do not appear on your body."

Zuko woodenly opens his shirtfront next, but the scar from Azula's lightning has vanished as well. His attention is drawn anew, though, by the healing scabs laid over the left side of his chest, concentrated over…

"My heart?" he wonders aloud, tracing these new lines with his finger.

Roku nods. "Your soul has suffered much, my great-grandson. But you have persevered, and it is healing."

"Some of these look fresher," he observes, still somewhat numb from all this information.

"Some of your hurts are very new indeed," the Fire-born Avatar says.

His face falls. "Katara," he whispers, and he is not entirely shocked to see new cuts appearing at the mere thought of her, although they begin to scab over almost instantly. He puts a hand to his chest, as if he can hold it in, and looks up at Roku. "Where is Aang? We need to begin our search for Koh. We need to get her back! I need her back!"

He feels wet blood beneath his hand, and he pushes harder against the wounds.

Roku looks sympathetic. "He will be here soon; I can feel him now. I must warn you to be careful around Koh as well, Zuko. He is…a vicious and cunning spirit, not one to be trifled with."

Zuko nods dully, not intending to exercise caution and rather planning to risk everything for his wife's safe return. But he does not tell Roku that.

* * *

In the meadow, not too far from Zuko, Toph also opens her eyes.

And frowns as panic rushes to congeal her blood and freeze her thoughts. She cannot earthbend, this is true; she is no more aware of the ground beneath her feet than any ordinary person, and perhaps even a little less than that. But…

_But_…

Her breath catches in her throat, and she staggers back a step, her head turning wildly as she seeks an explanation for this—for this—

"Toph, are you alright?" someone asks, and she watches in most profound shock as his lips shape the words. His voice is familiar, though: this must be Aang…

She wants to deny his concerns, but she cannot, her throat much too thick for speech, and she is only capable of shaking her head vehemently. Nothing is alright, nothing is alright! she wants to scream, but she cannot do that, either.

He steps closer to her, his eyebrows drawing together, and she wonders hazily if that is what concern looks like, actually looks like. "You look like you've seen a ghost, Toph! And while I know we're in the Spirit World, so that's a common occurrence, I…" He trails off and after a difficult moment, ventures, "Toph, are you…are you _looking_ at me? Can you…_see_ me?"

She staggers back again, overwhelmed by this sensory input. "I—I don't know! Is that what seeing is? I don't know! I've never seen before!"

Attracted by her volume, someone else walks over, someone different…_looking_ than Aang. Toph struggles with the concept and mostly fails, only stumbling further away on confused feet.

"What's wrong with Toph?" the stranger asks, and she nearly faints as she recognizes his voice, too.

"Zuko?" she blurts, eyes wide and frightened. "Is that you, Zuko?"

His brow furrows, too. "Um, yes," he confirms and glances at Aang. "Is she blind?"

"No!" she yells, raking her hair back from her eyes—how annoyingly it hangs! "Just the opposite!"

He blinks uncertainly, and then it fully dawns on him. "You…you can see?"

Tears well up now, tears borne of reflexive habit and not any real water, and she angrily finds that they blur her vision. Her _vision_! She dashes them away and stumbles again, finally succumbing to her inability to walk properly, and slumps at the edge of a pond, summoned as Zuko's was by a mere thought. She leans forward on her hands, still choking on the air in her throat, and forces herself to stare at her reflection for the very first time.

"Oh, spirits," she gasps, reaching out trembling fingers to brush the water's surface and ripple her mirror image. "_Oh, spirits…_"

"Toph! Toph, we're here, it's okay," Aang reassures her, kneeling at her side and bracingly gripping her shoulders. "We'll help you adapt. Promise." And he smiles at her.

She has never truly seen a smile before. She decides, in some distant corner of her consciousness, that she likes the effect it has on his face.

"You're…you're familiar, in a way," she manages to say, glancing at Zuko as he crouches behind the Avatar, still in her line of sight—dear spirits, _she has a line of sight!_ "Your contours, shape…I recognize that from the earthbending. But…but there's all this…_stuff_ in the middle, taking up the space, that I don't understand." She shakes her head, unable to conjure the words. "It's…overwhelming."

Aang's brow wrinkles, and she thinks it looks funny. He turns to speak to Zuko. "Stuff? Do you suppose she means color?"

"Color?" she echoes softly, not waiting for the firebender's reply. "Is that what color is?"

"I think that's what you're getting at," the Avatar confirms. "I can't imagine what else you'd be referring to. But what I don't get is why you can see at all! I thought you'd be utterly lost in the Spirit World, not suddenly granted your lost sense!"

Zuko speaks up, no longer holding his contemplative silence. "I saw Avatar Roku shortly before you two arrived. He said my scar was gone because the damage was to my body, not my soul. The same must hold true for Toph. There's no reason for her to be blind here, where her physical eyes don't even exist."

Aang does a double-take. "Whoa, your scar _is _gone. I thought something was odd about you…"

Toph clears her throat, reclaiming some of her composure and with it her displeasure at being ignored. "I'm not really used to seeing with my eyes, obviously," she says. "I wonder if…if you would let me combine this new vision with touch, as I used to know your faces, and hopefully combine my two versions of you."

They both nod, and slowly she examines their faces, tracing the ridges of their brow and the curves of their cheeks and the angles of their noses. She does so with an expression of rapt attention, determined to make sense of sight, and at length she completes her examination of Zuko and sifts her fingers through the fringe of his hair.

"What…color…is this?" she asks, almost timidly.

He smiles faintly, and she likes the effect it has on him even more. It makes her face feel somewhat hot. "It's black. My hair's black."

"Black," she echoes. "What else is black?"

Zuko shrugs. "The night sky. Volcanic earth, like in my homeland. Smoke, sometimes."

She mouths the word over and over again, as if permanently remembering its truest definition. "And…what is this?" she continues, pointing now towards his clothes. He answers, offering other things of the same color, and Aang joins in. They discuss the concept for several minutes until Toph seems to have acquired her current fill for the stuff. She is glad to feel the terror receding as she grows used to seeing, and the awkwardness swelling her throat as she finally can look at Zuko causes her to joke, "Well, I can see why Katara chose you, ha ha."

"Hey!" Aang bursts, exceedingly affronted. "What is that supposed to mean, huh?"

"Nothing that should upset you, Twinkle Toes," Toph waves off unhelpfully, suddenly feeling as if she has revealed too much, like when Suki saved her from drowning and she thought it was Sokka.

"Now, now," Zuko says, recovering from the brief mention of his wife, "I'm a married man, Toph."

She grins flippantly and is glad he has taken it as a tease. "Oh, alright, Sparky."

He sobers again quickly and straightens to his feet, dusting the dirt off his knees. "If you're ready to go, though, we should. I don't know how long it will take to find Katara, or how long it will take to free her, and I'd like to get this over with." His voice becomes tighter towards the end, and it tautly draws the skin around his eyes along with it.

Aang bounces lightly to his feet and offers Toph a hand up, which she of course ignores. "Right. The last time I was here, Koh lived some ways off. It might take awhile to get there, but time doesn't really pass the same here, so it won't be that bad. C'mon."

He leads the way through the meadow, Toph following behind and Zuko bringing up the rear. As they walk along, Zuko raises a hand to his chest and pushes against the wounds above his heart, which ache much like his scar did while it was healing.

He only hopes that these wounds will also numb with time.


	6. sei

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**vi.**_

The sun shines, far-off and hazy, in the golden sky above the trio of benders. Its light is sickly in appearance to both Zuko and Aang, but to Toph it is still one of the most wondrous things she has ever experienced. While her male companions seem determined and grim—and for good reason, of course—she nevertheless cannot stop the joy from constantly filling her heart, now that the sheer shock of vision has grown comfortable and familiar. Sometimes she longs for her earthbending, if only so she can connect the sensations of feel and sight and make more easy sense of them, but mostly she glories in this opportunity.

The world, even this Spirit World, is beautiful.

"What's that?" she asks, pointing an arm—an action which now has so much more purpose—at a distant object.

Aang peers in the indicated direction. "Oh, that's a tree."

Toph nods and says, as if to herself, "So that's what a tree looks like."

"It doesn't have any leaves, though," the Avatar adds. "It looks like trees do in winter, or when they're dead. If only we could find a tree whose leaves were changing colors, I am certain you would like that even more."

She shrugs diffidently. "I like it like this."

They continue on in silence, and Toph knows her neck ought to be hurting from all the rotation she's putting it through as she attempts to see absolutely everything, but as reality is in the Spirit World, she is not entirely connected to her physical form. She easily dismisses any possible pain in her quest to discover and then imprint everything permanently in her mind's eye.

It is as she scans the landscape, which has acquired more hills as of late, that she sees the man.

"Who's that?" she wonders, helpfully pointing him out to her friends.

Zuko squints. "Looks like a waterbender, or at least a Water tribesman," he decides.

Aang, though, has more to contribute. "That's not any waterbender!" he exclaims, and rushes off. The other two must run as well to catch up with him as the Avatar intercepts the other. "That's Kuruk!"

It is indeed the former Avatar, and he appears on edge, his ceremonial spear gripped tightly in his hands, his bearskin hood pulled ferociously over his eyes. When the three approach him, he assumes a defensive position and gruffly demands their identities.

"Who goes there?"

Aang slows and holds out his arms, indicating that Toph and Zuko halt. "Avatar Kuruk, it is I, Avatar Aang."

The warrior lowers his spear and pushes the bear's upper jaw further back on his head, revealing his face. "Oh. I did not mean to startle you," he apologizes, after a fashion, but then he stalks away, spear once again lifted.

"Wait!" Aang calls after him. "We are searching for Koh—aren't you? Perhaps we can combine our efforts."

Kuruk hesitates, and the hesitation stagnates into a pause, and eventually he remarks, "Force of habit, Avatar Aang. I know where Koh resides, but it does me no good to confront him." He hangs his head and tightens his grip on his weapon. "I can neither kill him nor reclaim my Ummi. It is hopeless."

"Wait!" the airbender repeats, but the shade of Kuruk has already vanished into thin air, much like any other spirit. Aang's shoulders slump, and he turns to his friends. "I guess he doesn't want to talk to us."

"Ya think, Twinkle Toes?" Toph drawls, hands on her hips, but her arrogant pose is disrupted when she becomes distracted by a butterfly.

Zuko watches her inspect it for a moment, and then he rests his heavy eyes on Aang. "That didn't sound good. If one of your past lives cannot rescue his love, what hope is there that we can?"

The earthbender interrupts Aang before he can properly open his mouth. "That's where Katara really came in handy. She was brimming full of hope. Kinda annoying sometimes, but helpful in situations like this. Say, what color is this thing's…um…things? They're…changing, I think."

Aang barely glances. "They're wings, and they're iridescent, so yes, they certainly appear to change color depending on the light. And if Katara's not here to do our hoping for us, we will have to do it ourselves. Amongst the three of us, we're three-quarters of the best benders in the whole world. I think we stand a pretty good chance at getting Koh to submit."

"We can't bend here," Zuko reminds him hollowly.

The monk huffs. "I know that," he says. "But it's part of who we are. Believing in it will help buoy our spirits." He chuckles then. "Our spirits. Well. That's all we are at the moment."

The moment of lightheartedness passes, and they resume their journey, winding deeper into the hills.

* * *

In the darkness, Katara sits, but she does not sit alone.

Ummi is with her, and another resident of Koh, an old man named Tuppit, and a rather androgynous figure with a painted face who insists to be referred to as the Magnificent Mime Mallakoi. The Fire Lady is rather uncertain about the last one, but she knows that this is no time to be choosy about one's allies, and she accepts his—or her—sheer weirdness with as much grace as she can muster.

"So you've been here how long?" she asks Tuppit.

The old man shakes his head in a listless fashion and raises a frail hand to his drooping mustache. "I…I cannot say," he admits at length, his voice sounding like sandpaper. "It has been…so long. So many ages of darkness. All I can remember is the darkness. It closes in on me…it wraps me…I cannot escape…" He trails off, drawing his limbs into his chest, and rocks like an abandoned child.

Katara purses her lips and vaguely nods. "I see," she says, feeling a measure of sympathy but knowing that for any of this to work, Koh's stolen faces will have to remember their individuality and desire to reclaim it. It does her no good to have allies without drive.

"I know how long I've been here!" the Magnificent Mime Mallakoi pipes up, raising a hand as if he—Katara will go with masculinity for now—believes himself to be in school.

"How long?" she asks.

"Two hundred twenty-six years, three months, nine days, and thirteen hours," he responds promptly, looking quite smug behind his paint.

The waterbender blinks. "Well, then. That's quite some time."

"I remember how it happened, too," Mallakoi continues, now speaking in a conspiratorial whisper.

Katara glances at Ummi, who is by far the only other normal person here, before she returns her attention to the very chatty mime. "And how would that be?"

He leaps to his feet, his colorful robes swirling around his form as he acts out his capture. "I was new to the Spirit World—I had been put to death, you see, by a rather grumpy Fire Lord with no love for theatre—and I was determined to entertain the denizens of this realm for all eternity."

Katara, politely, does not comment on this.

Mallakoi waves his arms about as he floats this way and that on his tip-toes. "All was well for Mallakoi the Magnificent Mime. No one could kill me again here! And otherwise, I seemed to be well-received by the citizens. But alas, alas, one day, through no fault of my own, I was viciously attacked! Well, that's not entirely true," he says, tipping the others a wink. "I was challenged to a contest by Koh! He wanted to watch me perform my mimes."

"That must have been quite an honor," Katara remarks vaguely.

He beams. "Indeed! To have such an ancient spirit request a performance was beyond my wildest dreams. Alas," he says, sobering, "it was not meant to be. I have always been a bit…shall we say…"

"Extravagant?" Ummi supplies, and Katara has to hide her smile behind her hand.

Mallakoi accepts that with a nod. "An excellent adjective, to be sure. And it was, again, the death of me! Halfway through my performance, whilst I was enclosing myself in an invisible box, I thought I would tell a joke to lighten the atmosphere. Koh must not have approved of this interruption, as he stole my face! Right off my head, easy as you please! It was quite rude. I still am uncertain what happened to my body," he adds.

"That was tragic for you," Katara says, striving to regain control of this meeting. "I am certain you would gladly try to reunite with your body by escaping Koh."

He winks at her again. "Just tell me how, my lady, and I shall be out in a twinkling! I am also a master escape artist, you see."

"Of course," she agrees in a thoroughly dismissive fashion, looking at Ummi again. "How many other people are here?"

Kuruk's fiancée shrugs. "It is difficult to say, like I said before. Not all of them are human, either. There is a monkey and, I believe, an owl or at least an owl-like creature."

The Fire Lady frowns and leans her weight on one of her hands. "That doesn't sound helpful."

"Oh, I don't know," Ummi replies. "As animals, they should have very strong instincts, especially concerning self-preservation. I imagine that every time Koh uses their faces, they are struggling to break free. They should require no convincing whatsoever."

She chuckles. "Well, good, because I'm not fluent in Monkey."

Mallakoi howls with laughter. "Oh, that is excellent, simply marvelous! My dear lady, may I incorporate that whimsical remark into my repertoire?"

Katara coughs. "I…I suppose. It wasn't really that funny…"

"Nonsense!" the Magnificent Mime denies. "It was lovely! Thigh-slapping! I shall cry with merriment and ruin my makeup, and I shall then weep for the ruin of the paint! Oh, the agony of theatre!" he cries, and he leaps and bounds right back into the darkness.

Katara coughs again. "Anyway," she manages, glancing at Tuppit, who still seems lost inside his own head. "Are you alright?" she asks, laying a hand on his shoulder.

The old man peers up at her through bleary eyes. "Mmm, is that you, Gashai? Have you come to visit your dear father at last?"

Before Katara can recover enough to reply, he slumps and resumes his rocking, occasionally muttering a bit of nonsense or humming snatches of unknown melodies.

"I think he's been here too long," Ummi opines. "He can't keep his head on straight, so to speak."

Katara sighs. "You weren't too different when we first met. I think if we keep talking to him, remind him that he's human and that this isn't the only reality, we might be able to reach him."

Ummi twists bunches of her robe in her fists, nervously wringing them. "What if we can't, though? And what if this doesn't work at all? What if we're stuck here forever?"

The Fire Lady fixes her with a stern look. "I won't have that kind of talk, Ummi. We're getting out of here. You will have Kuruk again, and I will have Zuko, and everything will be fine. It's just a matter of time."

The other woman is quiet, but she eventually ventures, "Time is strange here, Katara."

"I know," the waterbender admits. "But I think that plays to our advantage."

* * *

"So how long are we gonna walk around this sorry place before you admit we're lost, Twinkle Toes?" Toph asks in her most innocent voice.

Aang growls, almost inaudibly, and kicks an offending scrubby bush. "I don't understand it!" he complains. "Last time I was here, Koh lived right around here! Underneath this ghastly dead tree. I _remember_ it, but I can't seem to find it again. This is infuriating," he concludes, slamming his hands onto his hips and glaring reproachfully at the scenery.

"Perhaps we're trying too hard," Zuko offers. "The Spirit World doesn't operate like ours. It seems to do things when you're least expecting it."

"I was expecting it last time," Aang points out.

"But only in a sense," the firebender muses. "You didn't know what it looked like or where it exactly was. Maybe we can't look directly at it. Maybe we have to use our peripheral vision instead."

"What Sparky said," Toph agrees, and then she frowns. "Whatever peripheral vision is, of course."

Aang vaguely indicates the corner of his eye. "It's what you see over here, kinda, if you're not looking at something. But how am I supposed to do that?"

Zuko takes this opportunity to take the foremost place in their little group and continue walking. "You're not going to do anything. I am going to lead us there."

"But you don't know where you're going!" Aang protests.

"Exactly," the Fire Lord confirms, most mysteriously, and strides onwards.

Toph glances at Aang and confides in a whisper, "Y'know, I think Sparky's staring to act like Uncle Iroh."

He returns her sidelong look. "You mean he's stopped making any sense?"

She nods. "Pretty much."

Despite their doubts, though, the two follow their friend as he wanders amongst the hills, and Toph only distracts them once as she attempts to catch a frog.

_Katara sits across from Tuppit, studying him as best she can and trying to catch his eye._

Zuko climbs stoically up a steep hill, his companions toiling behind him, and eventually reaches its summit. From here he can see to the hazy horizons, and there, exactly as the Avatar described it, is a huge, dead, ghastly tree.

_"Please, Tuppit, do you remember anything?" Katara asks. "You managed to tell me your name. Can you tell me anything else?"_

_The old man rocks himself, his eyes locked on some middle distance, and fails to reply._

_Katara sighs and leans back on her hands, seeking new inspiration._

"That's it!" Aang exclaims. "Now we just have to—"

_Suddenly her head aches, and her vision swirls nauseatingly into a collection of color and contour—_

"Ah, Avatar Aang, you have arrived at last. I've been expecting you."

_Katara sees through her own eyes as Koh directs them, and her nonexistent heart clenches vice-tight in her chest._

_"No," she begs, trying to look away but being completely unable to. "No, please, don't show me this! Don't!"_

Zuko turns around as Aang is addressed, and a stabbing pain lances directly into his chest. His breathing hitches and stops, and he falls to his knees as his hand tightly presses over his heart, the agony more intense than ever before and the blood flowing freely.

"You can't show expression!" Aang says hurriedly, holding his hands over his face. "He'll steal your face if you do!"

Koh laughs vindictively with Katara's face. "You have nothing to fear, little Avatar. I would never want to reunite you with your lost love. I shall be stealing none of your faces."

_"Koh, stop it! Don't show me anymore! Please! STOP!" Katara screams in the silence of her head, unable to endure the sheer pain on Zuko's face as he gains his feet._

"Let her go!" he roars, tears streaming down his cheeks and his hands balling into such tight fists that the sinews stand out on his arms like ropes. "Let her go! Or I'll rip you apart!"

He starts forward, but Aang and Toph grapple with him, desperate to keep him still. He pulls against their hold, but he has difficulty doing more than writhing with them hanging determinedly onto each arm.

Koh laughs, laughs and laughs with her face, mocking them brutally. Zuko can barely keep his eyes focused on the merciless spirit; the habitual blood pounds in his head and makes clear thought absolutely impossible. All he can see is her face, her beautiful face, twisted and distorted into a cruel mask that takes delight in his torment. He is almost glad that the tears blur his vision so much, otherwise he could take in every awful detail.

"Give her back!" Zuko demands, his voice hoarse and raw and loud. "Give her back to me! Let her go!"

_"Zuko!" Katara yells, mentally pounding on the inexorable walls of Koh. "Zuko, I'm right here! Please!"_

Koh finally ceases his vile laughter and forces her lips to smirk instead. "This is as glorious as I hoped it would be. I do hope you are in equal agony, little Avatar."

Aang glares at him, but is careful not to lessen his grip on the Fire Lord. His own chest is aching, but he ignores the slow trickle of blood and guilt dampening his tunic. "She is not mine to love, Koh," he manages to say, his voice almost steady. "You are not hurting only me with this display. Have some compassion!"

The spirit raises an eyebrow. "Compassion? Since when has there ever been any compassion? I do not pity your pain—I revel in it! I cause it! It is bliss to see you like this! You are _weak_, Avatar! You are filled with inadequacies and failings! You are as miserable as the dirt beneath your feet! Worthless! You're worthless!"

Aang grits his teeth, his heart aching to see all these words fall from Katara's mouth. "Why do you bear such malice against me, Koh? I know that one of my past lives, Kuruk, tried to slay you. But that is only because you stole his love in the first place! Why would you do such a thing?"

Koh glares at him, twisting her face into an expression of venom and anger. "You do not remember, do you, little Avatar! You have had too many lives, too many faces, to remember the beginning! But _I_ do! I remember it all! I remember how the worlds used to be—I remember how there was but one world! I remember the creation of your pitiful physical realm! I remember the _choice!_"

He roars the last word, as if it is the most poisonous thing in existence.

Aang is bewildered. "Choice?" he echoes. "What choice?"

Koh lets out a spiteful, incredulous laugh. "You remember nothing! I cannot believe you remember nothing! You do not even remember that your Avatar spirit is my _brother!_"

Aang freezes, the weight of that statement leaving him reeling inside. It cannot be true…

_Katara ceases her escape attempts as well, too blindsided by this information. So did Koh actually envy the Avatar, as she had guessed?_

"Oh, yes! I see by your _face_ and _expression_ that you do not believe!" Koh spits. "Let me enlighten you, _brother!_ In the beginning of time, when there was but this realm, we were brother spirits. We are siblings of the four element spirits and children of the greatest spirits of all! But you do not recall this," he says, almost sadly. "You have lived too many times."

Aang struggles to regain his composure. "Please, Koh, tell me what you know. If you are my brother, you will tell me!"

Koh surveys him for a lengthy interval, and eventually complies. "Very well. We were not content, living here. Our brothers, Fire and Earth, and our sisters, Water and Air, wished to create a new world, a world in which they would invest their very essence! Our parents agreed and let them have their fun, but even once the world was created, they were not satisfied. They wanted more! They wanted beings like them to walk their world! And again our parents agreed!"

His voice has increased in wrath until he is now biting off each word, as if he cannot bear to have them in his mouth.

"They forged people and animals, delighting in their artistry," Koh goes on. "And then our parents saw what these people began to do, how they worshiped their own element and no other, how there was no balance in this new world. They saw fit to fix the mistakes of their arrogant children, and they decided the task would fall on one of us! One of us would serve to balance this broken failure of a world, and the other would have nothing. Nothing!"

Aang swallows. "And…our parents…"

"They chose you! They made your spirit into the Avatar spirit, into one which would cycle and renew and flourish!"

The monk frowns a bit then. "And…they took away your face? Or something? Why?"

Koh glares at him, and it is filled with ten times more ire now. "I was not pleased with their decision. They judged us unfairly! So I attempted to take your place. I tried to pose as the Avatar! And—" He chokes. "And they found me out and punished me. Said that if I wanted a different face so much, I would no longer have mine! They _stole it from me, don't you see! They took it away and left me like this!_"

His voice resounds in their heads, echoing painfully inside their skulls, and they clamp hands reflexively over their ears.

_Katara winces, the sheer force of Koh's emotion driving uncomfortable vibrations through her as well._

"I had no real identity then, no real soul," Koh jibbers on, sounding more and more unhinged with each syllable he utters. "I had to begin stealing the faces from others so that I would have some semblance of being! And always, always I waited and plotted for the day when I would be able to inflict pain upon you, even if that pain could never be comparable! Foolish Avatar, when first we met, I could not have stolen your face. Yours is the one face I cannot have, the one identity that has been forever withheld from me!"

Aang manages to open his eyes again and look up at Katara's wrathful face. This does cause him agony, of the acutest kind. Koh has certainly planned his revenge well: if he cannot save her now, he will feel regret and guilt and sorrow for the remainder of his days, and it might even serve to stain his spirit.

_"You've had your say!" Katara yells, renewing her escape attempts. "You're angry, we know why now, but you can't blame Aang for the actions of your parents! You have to let me go!"_

_"Quiet, foolish girl," Koh says inwardly. "You know not of which you speak."_

_"I know enough! This obscene jealousy will get you nowhere!"_

_"Quiet." He says it so forcefully that she actually feels the impact, and it does make her silent._

"And so, Avatar," Koh says more peacefully, the triumphant and gloating victor. "Now you will agonize. And I shall watch in delight. Welcome to my reckoning."

Zuko renews his struggles as well, sick to the core at seeing her apparently say all these things, sick of being tormented with her visage. "Damn it, Koh, let her go! You have hurt us enough! Let her go!"

_"Let me go!" Katara shouts, recovering from her stunned state and throwing all her being into this effort, all her drive and strength and desperation. "Zuko! Zuko! Zu—"_

"—ko! Zuko! Let me—let me…" She trails off in shock.

Her husband's furious expression falters.

Koh's face has changed…except that it is still Katara's.

But it is truly Katara's.

"Zuko!" she pleads, twisting this way and that within the confines of Koh's body. "Zuko, you have to get me out of here! Please!"

He stares up at her in wonderment, and Toph and Aang release him, allowing him to step closer. "Katara? Is that…is that really you?"

"Yes, it's me. I don't know what happened to Koh. I must've broken free on his hold, but it won't last, I know it won't last, Zuko, you have to help me now!"

Zuko raises a hand, reaching up to touch her cheek, still unable to comprehend that she is here, in at least some sense. "I'll try," he says, his fingers finding the edges of Koh's exoskeleton, as if he is preparing to haul her right out of the spirit's head.

"Zuko, you have to hurry, he's coming back, I can feel it, Zu—"

_"—ko! Zuko? No, no, no, I can't be back here, no!"_

The Fire Lord stumbles back as Koh slides a new face into place, displaying the painted features of Mallakoi. "She is a strong-willed one, Avatar," he admits, curving his rippled body up and away from the benders. "But never matter. You will never see her again."

"We're not leaving until we have her back!" Aang yells as the spirit retreats to its tree.

Zuko makes as if to pursue Koh, but ultimately he just slumps to the ground and buries his head in his hands.

* * *

In the darkness, Katara claws at the ground, as if she can tear the very fabric of Koh to pieces. Her fingers do not have any effect, but she tries anyway, her reflexive tears flooding down her cheeks and blinding her to the progress she is failing to make.

"Zuko!" she yells, her throat already raw. "Zuko!"

She felt his touch, she had! Right on her cheek! She can almost feel it still…

"How dare you defy me, foolish mortal!"

Koh's voice booms throughout the void, and the sheer force of the sound bowls Katara over. She manages to stop herself from rolling before her vacant inner ears can trick her into dizziness, and she glances guardedly around the darkness. Koh has never spoken to her here before, and she has believed such a thing to be impossible.

Apparently not.

She summons her courage and replies. "You think I'm just gonna sit here and take this? You better re-evaluate your understanding of foolish mortals!"

"I shall not wear your face again!" Koh continues, as if he has not heard. "I condemn you to this void! Your sanity will degenerate until you are nothing more than a gibbering idiot who cannot remember light! This is the price for your audacity!"

Katara swallows and does not yet rise, remaining on her stomach with only her forearm for leverage. She realizes that she is inside Koh, in some sense, and that the spirit cannot invade this place in any physical manifestation, but she doesn't know if that will stop him from dropping the ceiling on her. He sounds unlike she has ever heard: normally calmly smug, he now rants and shouts in unbridled rage. This unpredictability makes him infinitely more dangerous, and she knows she should toe the line.

She can't resist one last try, though.

"You saw what happened! The man I love is not the Avatar! The Avatar does not love me, except as a friend! Using me to get to him is flawed! It's completely unfair!"

"_Do not speak to me of unfairness!_"

Katara drops all the way to the floor, covering her head with her hands in a reflexive attempt to deaden the sound. It rings regardless in her ears, rattling her entire being, and she grits her teeth as she feels the blood on her palms, as it leaks from her assaulted ears.

This isn't really real, she desperately reminds herself. I have no blood to bleed with…

And the thought clots the broken capillaries, and shakily, she wipes the red liquid on her robe, leaving dark stains behind. That appears to have been Koh's parting remark, as silence reigns in such a way that it is almost louder than his words.

Slowly, she shifts her body into a seated position. She does not doubt his word; he will not wear her face again. But she does not believe this is a setback—rather, it is quite the victory.

"Ummi," she calls.

The other Water Tribe woman appears from the velvet void, and she looks with concern at Katara. "What happened? We all felt Koh shaking! It was as if the world were coming to an end!"

To her surprise, the Fire Lady smiles grimly. "I broke free of his hold, Ummi. For a moment, I had my own face in the light of day. I saw Zuko," she reveals, more softly, and her expression grows distant before she shakes herself back to the present. "Our plan will definitely work."

Ummi sits down as well. "I wonder if the shaking were Koh trying to reassert himself over you."

"I bet it was," Katara agrees.

The older woman frowns. "But it seems he succeeded if you're still here. Why does this mean the plan will work?"

The waterbender gains her feet and straightens her robe. "Come on, we need to find the others. I'll explain everything then."

With that, she marches off into the darkness, Ummi close on her heels.


	7. sette

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**vii.**_

The trio of benders sits around their campfire in varying states of moroseness. Toph knows that she has fared the best out of the three, but she can admit, if only to herself, that she has been terribly shaken by the day's events. Or at least she thinks it was day, she realizes idly. The sky has turned black, as Zuko explained earlier, and she assumes it is now nighttime. She isn't certain why the Spirit World has taken on such a change, but if ponds and trees and people appear without a moment's notice, she doesn't see why the sun and moon can't change shifts as easily.

She sobers inwardly as her thoughts return to their previous anchor: Koh and Katara's face. Toph's connection to the waterbender might arguably be the weakest, but even she was unprepared for the horror of witnessing the Fire Lady in such a fashion. Differences in temperament aside, Toph has for a long time now—secretly—viewed Katara as the older sister she never had, and she hates what this vengeful, cruel spirit has done to her.

All nagging and mothering aside, Katara doesn't deserve it.

But Toph feels that it has fallen upon her to lighten the mood, so she clears her throat.

"This is fire, eh?" she remarks, poking at their campfire with a stick.

The bender of that particular element fails to respond, and Aang only confirms woodenly, "Yes."

Toph tilts her head to the side, observing the flames. "It's quite nice to look at," she says. "I could never really _see_ fire with my earthbending. It made you firebenders a pain in the ass to fight, let me tell you."

She directs the last statement at Zuko, but he still ignores her, or perhaps he is too lost in his misery to even hear at all.

"It must be very nice-looking when you bend it," the petite girl goes on, stirring the embers further with the stick. "All…what, orange and red and yellow?"

"It can be blue, too," Zuko says, and Toph looks at him in surprise for speaking. "Azula's fire was always blue. She could burn it much hotter than is normally done, so the flames were blue and white."

Toph absorbs that with a furrowed brow. "Blue?" she echoes, tasting the word. "I don't think I've seen blue yet."

"My arrow tattoo is blue," Aang points out helpfully.

She snorts. "Your arrow tattoo is practically…what is it…gray with all this…this darkness. And besides," she adds, more flippantly, "your arrow tattoo is stupid."

"What?" Aang yelps, leaping to his feet and pointing a dramatic finger at her. "You take that back! My arrow tattoo is the symbol of a master airbender! It is not stupid!"

Toph regards him with a raised eyebrow. "Believe me, Aang. I've only just begun seeing you, and that thing on your forehead is stupid. Do other people generally forget where to look, is that it?"

"Toph, that's enough," Zuko cuts in, although given his tone of voice, he doesn't seem terribly invested in the conversation.

"Oh, come on," she gripes. "You have to at least have some sort of opinion about it, Sparky."

The firebender raises a hand to trace the smooth, flawless skin around his left eye. "I usually have a horrible scar. I don't think I'm entitled to an opinion about tattoos or their potential stupidity. It's not something he can erase."

The earthbender goes quiet, feeling a prickle of shame, and casts about for another topic. Unfortunately, there is now only one she can land upon.

"So that was Katara, eh?" she says with as much nonchalance as she can summon.

Zuko doesn't look at her, keeping his gaze fixed in the direction of Koh's tree, but he denies simply, "That wasn't Katara."

"That shouldn't have been the way you first saw her," Aang adds with a sigh. He is sitting cross-legged now, and he leans an elbow on one knee and leans his chin upon that uplifted hand, and once properly slumped, he gazes blankly into the flickering flames. "Zuko's right. It was nothing like her at all. I've never seen her so…so angry and hateful in my life."

To everyone's surprise, Zuko points out with weakest humor, "I wouldn't know about _that_."

The silence returns again, though, this time seeming to wrap them in an even thicker cocoon, and Toph finds herself clearing her throat and rallying onward. "Y'know, despite the fact that she was all pissed off and, y'know, basically just a head in this giant buggy creature thing…" She chuckles a little at her own words before concluding, "Well, I'm not surprised the two of you were at each other's throats over her. Or Jet," she goes on brightly. "Or Haru. Or pretty much anyone ever who's male and breathing."

Zuko glances at her sidelong, and Aang raises his chin from his hand.

"What?" Toph protests. "You've met me, right? Sarcasm? Sokka's not the only one who can do it. And anyway, I was just saying that she's not too ugly. 'S all. Geez." Huffing a breath upwards to lift her bangs, the earthbender slouches back on her hands in fine offended fashion.

And she blushes bright red when Zuko observes, "You're very pretty, too, Toph."

After engaging in a violent coughing fit, the girl curls her knees up to her chest. "Whoa, there, Sparky. Slow down. Weren't you just reminding me that you're a married man? And I just saw Katara angry—I don't need that all coming down on my head, thank you very much."

The firebender turns, no longer lost in the distance but very much involved in the present. His golden eyes meet Toph's, and it is all she can do not to dodge his gaze. It is a weighty thing, eye contact, and she is not altogether certain she likes that. "That's not what I was getting at, which you know very well. I understand that as a blind person, it might be easier to disregard things like appearance, which don't really factor into your life. I'm sure that coming here and actually seeing has been overwhelming in the best of ways, but I'd guess that it also comes with a sudden onslaught of new self-consciousness. You've never had to worry about what you looked like before. You never even knew."

Toph wishes she could huff in an utterly indifferent way, but she can't quite summon the necessary arrogant air.

Zuko shrugs. "And maybe even if you suspected before, maybe you did your best not to be 'pretty'. Maybe you thought it made you weak, somehow, that you couldn't be tough if you were also pretty. But you can be pretty, and you can be tough, and," here he chuckles, "you can also be pretty tough."

She coughs again and hates all this blushing, but she is enjoying Aang's flabbergasted expression out of the corner of her eye. "Nice one, Sparky. So this is how you win all the women, is it? Such artful flattery?"

Entirely stone-faced, Zuko replies, "No, that's all in the ab muscles."

Aang bursts out laughing, actually rocking over onto his back. He pounds his fists into the ground before rocking back up, his familiar ear-to-ear grin brightening his face. "Good one, Zuko! All in the ab muscles…hahaha…" He trails off, his expression slowly degenerating into a frown, and puts a discerning hand to his own stomach.

Toph raises an eyebrow at the Avatar's actions but faces the Fire Lord once more. "Well, Sparky. Thanks, I guess. I'd punch you, but you're sitting waaaaay over there, and it's too much effort."

He smiles, just a sliver. "We're all friends here, Toph. We'll always accept you, no matter what."

Aang clears his throat, no longer contemplating his own musculature, and looks grim. "I hate to kill the mood, but speaking of no matter what…what are we going to do about Koh? How're we going to free Katara?"

The light recedes again from Zuko's eyes. "I could tear him limb from limb," he suggests. "I would've earlier if you hadn't stopped me." His fists open and close, and when he speaks again, his voice is near a growl. "Why did you stop me?"

"Attacking Koh wouldn't have solved anything," Aang is quick to explain. "He's a very powerful spirit; he simply could have banished you from this world. Hei Bei, a much weaker forest spirit, expelled me from here back during the war. I'm sure Koh would've sent you back to the Oasis before you'd gotten within a proper foot of him."

Toph rolls her eyes. "There goes my plan to punch 'im upside the jaw. Any other ideas?"

"Well, Katara herself did something," the airbender recalls. "She seemed to reassert control over her face, however briefly. I wonder if she could break herself free."

The earthbender flops back. "Glad we came all this way then!"

Zuko doesn't glance at her this time. "You're happy we came," he states.

She gazes up at the thousands of stars strewn across the inky heavens, at the way the scudding clouds both reflect and block their light, and allows herself to smile. "Yeah, I know," she agrees softly.

The Fire Lord focuses on the Avatar. "But are you suggesting we just sit here and do nothing? There must be some way we can help her!"

Aang rubs his chin reflectively. "Hm. Maybe Katara was able to wedge herself in because Koh was so distracted with us. He was very…well, expressive, ironically."

"He was batshit crazy, that's what he was," Toph offers, as eloquent as ever.

"Yes, that," he concedes, bypassing the more colorful aspects of the phrase. "I suppose our best bet would be to continue distracting him. Perhaps then Katara will be able to seize another opportunity to force her escape."

Zuko looks at him with distressingly empty eyes. "That's it?" he asks in a whisper.

Aang shrugs apologetically. "That's all I can think of for now. I'm sorry, Zuko. We'll have to make do."

The firebender snorts and rises lithely to his feet.

"Where're you going?" the Avatar demands, halfway to his feet as well when the other man replies.

"I'm not off to attack Koh," he says. "I just want to be alone, alright? I need to meditate. I can't…I can't even think straight right now. I just keep…_seeing_ her like that, and I…" He runs his hands back through his hair, as if the motion could also dislodge his thoughts. "I can't even…"

"Hey, Sparky, we're all friends here," Toph reminds him, her voice casual despite the actual weight of the words. "Sit down."

To Aang's surprise, and perhaps slightly to Zuko's own, the firebender sits as ordered.

The girl clears her throat and gestures vaguely. "Now talk. Out with it."

He frowns. "Out with…what?"

"Anything. Everything. You've gotta say something," Toph says. "I perfected waiting and listening as an earthbender, and while I'm not the mushy, 'yay feelings' kind of type, I won't let you mope alone in the dark. Besides," she adds with a smirk, "you said I was pretty. So talk. Go on and on about how much you loooove Katara until we're all sick to our stomachs. Go on."

Zuko blinks. "I, er…okay…" After that riveting introduction, though, he falls silent, warring with too many thoughts in his head. Toph is just about to prompt him when Aang speaks up.

"Her smile," he says softly, reverentially, and he glances briefly at Zuko, as if daring the other man to object, before he continues, quiet again. "The first thing I saw when I woke up was her smile. It's still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"Alright!" Toph declares. "Disgustingly sweet! My teeth are rotting, but it's the right idea. Now buck up, Zuko. Tell us how much you like her ears."

He chuckles, even if it is just one exhalation. "Her ears?" he echoes, bemused.

She lifts her hands. "Hey, I'm just throwin' things out there. You catch whatever you like."

He grins a bit this time and looks down to study his fingertips. After a lengthy hesitation, he murmurs, "I could almost swear that she never properly smiled at me until after I'd taken Azula's lightning for her. I remember her turning me over and I thought, even then, that it was so strange—but in such a good way—for her to be happy I was alive. And that, in that same strange, good way, I was so very happy she was alive." He shakes his head a little. "Taking that lightning has to be the stupidest thing I've ever done, but…I've always considered it the best, too."

Toph huffs in the following silence. "A bit deep, Sparky," she remarks critically. "Should've stuck with her ears."

Zuko grins halfway again, and as Aang begins reminiscing, he glances off into the shadowy landscape of the Spirit World; he can just see the darker shadow of Koh's tree against the black sky, and only then because it blocks the stars.

I'll see you again soon, he promises her. We've overcome too much to burn out now.

* * *

In the darkness, Katara sits across from Tuppit, and she's not smiling. Instead, she's frowning at the old man, chin in hand, brow deeply furrowed.

"Shall I delight you all with my famed juggling? I shall, shan't I! Now I just need something to toss…if any of you would be so kind to—"

"That's enough, Mallakoi," Ummi says, and as Katara glances sidelong, she watches the other tribeswoman leading the mime somewhat away from the group of people they've gathered. After that, though, the waterbender returns her attention to the last remaining problem: Tuppit and his determined grip on incoherence.

"I can't help you if you don't talk to me," she points out, somewhat exasperated.

But the old man only continues rocking back and forth, his eyes shifting ever so slightly from distant point to distant point, but never truly focusing on anything. Katara even tries to move into his line of sight, but even while she's there, he doesn't look at her so much as through her.

With a barely contained sigh, Katara slumps to one side and idly scratches her bare ankle before adjusting the fall of her robe. It is still the same robe she conjured when she first arrived in Koh; she has seen no need to change it, as it's not as if it has gotten dirty somehow. It reminds her, though, that in some strange way, time does indeed pass in the Spirit World and inside Koh.

Which in turn reminds her that she must do anything to get home.

She squares her shoulders and sits up properly, her icy eyes serious and discerning as she studies Tuppit. He has hardly spoken to her beyond rambling, senseless observations of the darkness, but he has made a foray or two into sensible thought: once when he told her his name, and once when he mentioned his daughter's.

Katara draws a deep breath. It feels terribly wrong to do this, but…

Leaning forward, she carefully takes one of his hands, and the aged skin is leathery and dry beneath hers. Tuppit doesn't seem to notice even this action, but she perseveres, curling her fingers around his and speaking.

"Father? It's me, Gashai. I've come home, Father. I'm here now."

His rheumy eyes roll about a bit more, but slowly they slide into the path of hers. He stares at her for a long time, not speaking, but not looking away, either. Encouraged, Katara continues.

"I'm sorry I left, Father. It wasn't your fault, you know," she elaborates, taking shots in the dark.

Tuppit's head wobbles slightly, and then he looks down at the darkness below them. "Your mother…she was sad to see you go," he whispers. "But I insisted it was…for the best…"

"It's all worked out, Father. I'm home again now," she points out, squeezing his frail hand.

He seems to have become lost in a train of thought, however, one he is determined to see through. "Being an artist…was no lifestyle for a young lady. No lifestyle for anyone. You have to…work for a living. Not paint silly pictures. Mmm…I did not approve, and no one was to do such things in my home…no, no…"

Katara frowns, not because he is on a tangent, but because, for some reason, pieces are falling together. During her travels with Aang after the war, and during her time with Zuko after that, she has traveled to nearly every last corner of the Four Nations, and many of those corners were palaces and other places of prominence. She has heard the name Gashai before, and seen the paintings—in fact, Zuko himself owns one, she recalls. It was a splendid landscape, over twenty feet long and eight feet tall, depicting the bloom of the fire lilies beneath one of the volcanoes.

"That Gashai?" she wonders aloud. "Your daughter is _that_ Gashai?"

"I told you to leave," Tuppit mumbles onward. "I told you…mm, that you couldn't stay at home if you wanted to do that artist thing. So you left…for years, you were gone. Your mother…was very sad you left. And then she got sick one winter, and she passed, but still you did not come home…"

Katara slackens somewhat, saddened by this story, this history.

"And I thought it was all for the best. If you couldn't come home for your mother, then I was right about you from the beginning. Selfish child, only concerned with your own delusions of grandeur, never caring about practical things that actually mattered…" He sighs, long and low. "I wish I had been wrong about you, though. I wish you had come home sooner…"

"I'm here now," she says, a feeble attempt at continuing this charade.

Tuppit stares at her. "And where are we? Where is here?" he almost sneers. "There is nothing but darkness, darkness…we can't escape the darkness. It is…all around…"

"No!" Katara denies sharply, and she snatches up his hand again, this time with both of her own. "No! We can escape the darkness, and we will! Tuppit, I've heard of your daughter—she's the most famous artist who ever lived! Her works are displayed in every nation and studied and adored by all! Your life might not have been the one you wanted, and her life might also not have been the one you wanted, but it was the one she should have had! She brought beauty to the entire world when no one made art upon such a scale. You should be proud of her, not ashamed or angry!"

She suddenly stops, realizing she has begun yelling in her passion, and attracted the attention of the other prisoners of Koh. But she has also attracted the attention of Tuppit, who regards her with clarity for the first time.

"Who—who are you?" he asks.

"I'm Katara," she says simply. "And if you want to get out of Koh and speak to your wife and daughter again in the Spirit World, you're going to have to cooperate with me, alright?"

Tuppit glances around, seeing the others for the first time, and eventually looks back up at her.

"Alright."

* * *

Zuko is awake long before either of his companions; he wasn't exactly tired, as he doesn't think his spirit can become fatigued in the same way as his body, but sleeping is a habitual action, so he slept anyway. But not for long, and it's just as well that he can't become genuinely exhausted.

He instead sits and watches the murky gold of a Spirit World day reclaim the sky and wishes he could do something for Katara. Their conversation the night previous had been good, and cathartic really in a way, but it did not solve the problem of being unable to help her. He hates this inactivity. He hates that he cannot rip her from the disgusting thing and be done with it.

He hates that the brief sensation of her cheek beneath his fingers might be the last he ever experiences.

Tears sear his eyes, unasked for and unwanted, and he buries his face in the shelter of his arms and does his best not to sob.

"Hey, Zuko, it'll be alright. We'll get her back, just you wait and see."

It takes him a moment to realize the speaker is Toph; the use of his real name throws him. Scrubbing at his cheeks as best he can, he peers up at her from the corner of his eye. She is crouched next to him, hand on his shoulder.

"No offense, Toph, but it's kinda weird for you to be all nice and everything," he croaks.

The hand on his shoulder becomes a fist and impacts none too lightly. He winces and almost grins.

"None taken, Sparky," she remarks airily, straightening once more. She wanders off, distracted anew by a flower, and further still by a bird that flies overhead.

"I can't lose her, Toph," he murmurs, not so much to the earthbender as to the general universe. He presses his hand against his chest, feeling the slow blood leak, and knows that if he does lose her, it will never stop hurting.

The black-haired girl manages to catch a butterfly carefully in the cradle of her fingers, but she spares enough time to look at her friend. "We know, Sparky. That's why we're here in the first place."

"I know that," he says. "Your support really does mean a lot."

"No, Sparky, I meant that we can't lose her, either," Toph clarifies, more quietly. "I don't see her as much as I used to, and that's just as well, because now when I do she doesn't nag me about things," she quips, a momentary burst of humor. "But I still want to be able to see her again. And if I get to kick spirit ass along the way, all the better for me."

Zuko smiles, if faintly and fleetingly, and only just realizes that Aang has disappeared. But before he can open his mouth to voice the question, the airbender appears on the top of a nearby hill, someone else in tow. As they near the little campsite, Zuko recognizes the Water Tribesman as Avatar Kuruk from the previous day.

The Fire Lord gets to his feet. "Aang, what're you doing? Why did you bring Kuruk?"

Kuruk offers a little bow, which Zuko returns. "Avatar Aang summoned me. He said that if we manage to distract Koh enough, Ummi and Lady Katara might be able to break free on their own accord. He also said that Koh is our brother-spirit, but I do not recall this, either, and nor do any of the other Avatars we could find to ask. It must have been many ages of the world ago to cause such depth of forgetfulness." He shrugs, brushing aside that mystery, and reiterates, "I will do anything to reunite with Ummi, even to follow a long shot such as this. Besides, it's not as if it's worse than anything I've done for the past centuries."

Toph snorts. "Now that's optimism at its finest. So when're we going to pay Koh a visit?"

Aang glances at the distant tree, at the way it looks like a spreading stain of ink against the sky. "Why not now?"

"Do you suppose Katara is ready?" Zuko wonders.

"We'll just have to find out," the airbender decides. "Even if it's not her face Koh's wearing, who knows, she might be able to communicate with the other stolen spirits somehow. She might figure out what we're up to."

Zuko nods, grim. "Then let's go."

* * *

In the darkness, Ummi jerks back into wakefulness.

Katara, who is watching her closely, asks, "Well? Did you see anything?"

To her surprise, the other woman's eyes are shining. "Kuruk! I saw Kuruk! He is approaching with your husband, Katara! He has come for me!"

The Fire Lady doesn't have much time for empathy. "Zuko's here again?" she echoes, savoring the notion. And then she refocuses mightily and turns to the gathered souls.

"Alright, everyone, you know the deal! Once Koh wears your face, you fight like hell to break free! If he's distressed enough, he'll switch your face. The next person will have to also fight, and the next, and the next! Maybe we'll be able to escape one by one, and sooner or later, he won't have any face to wear at all! Got it? Let's go!"

* * *

The two Avatars, the Fire Lord, and the master earthbender all come to a practiced halt outside Koh's lair. They stay half a dozen feet apart from each other, ready to ring around the foul spirit and harass him from every side. But at the moment, Koh does not appear, and they wait, poised, on his doorstep.

"Remember, everyone," Aang cautions. "Don't do anything too crazy, or he might just banish you from the Spirit World."

"Hurling insults, maybe a few rocks, got it, Twinkle Toes," Toph drawls, grinning a dangerous sort of grin and stooping to lift a choice stone from the many puddles.

"But don't—"

"Aim for the head, how stupid do you think I am?" she complains, tossing the rock up and down and looking sourly at the bald monk. "I have no plans to knock Katara out when she's on the brink of freedom, thanks."

Aang returns her glare. "I'm just _saying_," he protests.

Kuruk follows Toph's cue, selecting smaller stones from the still waters and amassing a collection on solid ground. He fits one of them into a leather sling and twirls it in readiness.

Zuko gathers up several lengths of thick vine, intent on immobilizing the spirit, and knots lassoes into their ends.

Aang hefts Kuruk's spear and nods at the others, who all subtly return the gesture. Then he takes in a breath the way only an airbender can inhale and booms out a challenge.

"Hey, Koh! You in there? Come out and fight, you coward! We're ready for you!"

"Yeah, you crazy-ass scorpion!" Toph chimes in. "Come out if you're man enough—or have you been ugly for too long?"

Kuruk nods approvingly. "Nice one, Toph."

She flashes another grin. "Thanks, Bearhat."

The Water Avatar shrugs at the nickname and roars, "Crawl out of your hole, you disgusting excuse for a spirit creature! It is I, Avatar Kuruk! We shall finally fight our battle as it was meant to be fought! Face me!"

Zuko, meanwhile, has slunk around the tree and clambered up its gigantic, gnarled roots until he has achieved a vantage point directly above the entrance. So when Koh rushes forth, legs clicking and stolen face hissing a challenge, the firebender easily drops the noose around its thick neck.

"What is this?" Koh demands with Mallakoi's painted face, and he jerks sharply, pulling Zuko right off the ledge. The Fire Lord crashes into the ground on his side but determinedly gains his feet, getting into a stance and still pulling on the vine. Koh pulls back, initiating a game of tug of war, but Zuko gamely holds his ground, his muscles standing out and his jaw firmly set.

"Now!" Aang yells, and Toph and Kuruk begin peppering the armored, banded body with their stones. Momentarily distracted by this assault, Koh lets his focus on Zuko slip, and Zuko takes advantage of this by winding the vine underneath and then around one of the huge roots and tying it off, effectively leashing Koh. The spirit still hasn't noticed the change, too busy yelling at the Avatars and Toph, and the firebender gathers up another coil of vine and sneaks around to the spirit's other side, ducking a rebounding rock in the process.

Twirling his second lasso with all the finesse of a veteran cowboy, Zuko looses the vine in the direction of Koh's uppermost leg; it falls on its target, and the amber-eyed man heaves on the line, causing it to tighten until it is flush with the crab-like leg.

Koh notices this attack and turns on the firebender, nearly spitting in rage, and leaps at him—or at least tries to. The leash-vine chokes him, and Koh sputters in bewildered anger and attempts to discover the cause, giving Zuko enough time to anchor this vine to the tree, too.

"What is this?" the spirit screeches. "What are you trying to do, foolish mortals? You think you can defeat me with your measly weapons? I am Koh, the Face-Stealer! I am more powerful than you!" He writhes against his bonds, and Toph heaves a particularly large rock into his banded belly; even without earthbending, she is still more adept with stones than most.

Koh wheezes at the startling impact but tries to rally. "No, I am Koh! I shall not be beaten by the likes of you! I will—hellooooooo, ladies and gentlemen! It is my greatest pleasure to introduce myself: the Magnificent Mime Mallakoi! Are you lovers of the theatre? Would you like me to perform a jig? Or perhaps a nice recitation?"

"What the hell?" Toph demands, her jaw slackening in disbelief. "Who's this new psycho?"

"Psycho I am not," Mallakoi says with an impish wink, "but psychedelic this may be! You have never before witnessed such alarming antics in all your life. Now please settle down, for the Magnificent Mime Mallakoi will astound your mind and charm your heart with—"

And suddenly, forcefully, Koh's face changes, replacing Mallakoi with the visage of Ummi, instead.

Kuruk fails to loose his next stone. "Ummi!"

"No, not Ummi, Koh!" the spirits snarls, renewing his escape attempts from the vines. Zuko hurriedly gets another length, intent on reinforcing the prison. "I am Koh, and I don't know what you're trying to do, but it will fail! You are mere mortals, foolish stupid fleeting mortals! You cannot defeat me! I am eternal! I am more powerful! I am Koh!"

"Yeah, Ugly, you said that already," Toph remarks, and continues stoning the creature. "I'm Koh, blah blah, you can't win, blah blah, and also, what was it, oh yeah, _blah blah_."

Ummi's face screws up in anger, and Koh shakes his head, thrashing about as much he can, only to find that Zuko has trapped another one of his legs and now anchored him from behind as well. "Stop doing that!" Koh protests. "I demand that you stop doing that, you—Kuruk! Kuruk! It's me, Ummi! Kuruk!"

"Ummi!" the Water Avatar yells again, rushing forward to his fiancée. "Oh, Ummi, at last, it truly is you!" He tucks his sling into his belt and reaches up, cradling her face in his hands. "I'll free you, I swear I will!"

"You're doing well, my love!" Ummi reports hastily. "I cannot hold him off for long, but you must continue this distraction—it is allowing us to break free, if only for a short time, but I feel stronger for it already!"

"Is that what you're doing?" Aang cuts in. "Forcing him to change faces by overpowering him?"

Ummi nods. "Yes, yes! At least, Katara believes that he will run out of faces if we all resist, and then what will he have to revert to? He has no face of his own."

"Katara!" Zuko says, dodging into the other woman's view. "Is she alright?"

Ummi smiles. "You must be Zuko."

Aang glowers a bit. "Why couldn't _I_ be Zuko?" he grumbles, and Toph kicks him in the shin.

"Katara is fine," Ummi assures him. "But…ah, Koh, he is coming back…I cannot hold him off…"

"I will be here, my love!" Kuruk promises her. "I will see you again soon!"

The woman nods. "Yes, we will—" And then suddenly her face is replaced, hideously, by the blue-nosed monkey's, and her voice by one they know too well. "Argh, you disgusting mortals!" Koh rants. "What is it you are—you are—arrggghhaaaaraaa!"

Toph frowns. "What is it we are what, now?"

Koh continues to howl, and Kuruk eyes him shrewdly. "I don't believe that is Koh screaming. I think the beast whose face he wears has asserted itself quite easily."

"Ummi did seem to have an easier time of it than that freak show before her," the earthbender remarks, chucking another rock for good measure.

"Maybe they're breaking free of his grip?" Aang suggests.

Zuko bares his teeth. "Then let's keep fighting! Come on!" And he lifts his own rock to throw.

The monkey's face is replaced with a middle-aged man who, after some of Koh's shrieking threats, introduces himself as Carris and takes the time to say that things seem to be going according to plan. When Koh then diverts into a curious owl visage, he does not have long to speak humanly before the owl begins a piercing whistle all of its own and even appears to want to take Koh's body airborne. But the spirit forcibly puts another face on, banishing the owl back to the shadowy depths, but his victory is fleeting. This new face defies him as well, and when all seems as if Koh has been beaten into genuine retreat, he chooses an old man's face.

Tuppit looks down on them, but it is Koh behind his eyes. "Finally!" the spirit gasps. "Someone who does not defy my every whim! You stupid mortals are planning something, I know you are, but I will defeat you. You cannot defeat me, not even my brother Avatars! There is nothing in either world that can defeat me—nothing is strong enough!"

Aang glares. "I think you underestimate the strength of human willpower. Freedom is an addicting thing; once we get a taste of it, it's all we want. You think you can hold these people forever?"

"I've held them for millennia!" Koh crows victoriously. "You dare believe that one little plan will upend all that? You think one upstart waterbender can topple my regime?"

"If that upstart waterbender is Sugar Queen, then yeah, I think she can!" Toph puts in, throwing a stone which rattles off Koh's leg.

Koh wears Tuppit's face smugly. "You think your dearest Katara can win? But I will not wear her face! She will have no more chances to defy me!"

"What about when there're no other faces left? You'll be forced to wear hers," Zuko growls, batting at Koh's side with a hefty stick.

"Foolish mortal, this face is more than sufficient!" Koh laughs. "This soul has no fight in him. He has been here for hundreds upon hundreds upon _hundreds_ of years! He does not remember what light is, or life, of anything but my internal darkness! He does not have the strength to—"

Koh slumps suddenly, and the attacking benders regard him warily. At length, he straightens, but it is not the vengeful spirit anymore.

Tuppit smacks his lips and glances around. "Well, I'll be. It does work."

Still cautious, Aang ventures, "So you're…not Koh?"

Tuppit's face contorts in fury. "That evil bastard! He has stolen my time, time I should have been spending in the Spirit World with my wife and daughter, time I foolishly did not spend with them in the physical world! He has stolen my redemption from me, and that is unforgiveable! I must speak to my daughter, I must! Do you know where she is? Do you?"

"Er, no…" Aang admits, glancing at his friends.

"Then I cannot remain here—I must find her! I must!" Tuppit insists, and he strives to break free of Zuko's entrapping vines. "Where would she be, I wonder? Where would she—"

"Enough!" Koh screams, flashing another, female face into position. "That's _enough_! I will not endure this humiliating betrayal any longer! No! I will not…at last, light! I can't remember the last time I saw light with my own eyes, so to speak!" the new face exclaims joyfully. "It is more beautiful this way, it truly is. To look upon what I wish to look upon, and not what that monster chooses me to see! It is glorious! Marvelous! Oh, so many haikus come to mind, which one shall I declare first?"

Toph coughs into her fist. "Er, whichever one you want?"

"Then I shall begin with one concerning the light upon cherry blossoms," the face decides. "Ahem. 'Softly floating'—no, I shall not have this, _I shall not have this!_"

Koh regains control, and the benders pause despite themselves.

He is wearing Katara's face.

"You hideous mortals, how I hate you so!" the spirit whines. "I should never have kept you for company, because I hate you! I hate you! I shall watch you all writhe in the depths of fire for this—Zuko! Zuko, it's me! Katara!"

"Oh, thank Agni," he says, dropping the branch and racing up to her. He raises his hands and caresses her face. "Oh, Katara, you're here again, I can see you again…"

"I know, love, it's wonderful to see you, too," she says, but she swiftly blinks away the swelling tears. "But that can come later. Right now we need to continue with the plan—it's working! I almost can't believe it's working," she adds, as if to herself. "Never mind the odds, though. I've been talking with the others, and they all think they've gotten something of a foothold—that since they've broken Koh's control once, they can do it much easier the second time. With any luck, we'll be able to force him into such a swift rotation that he simply cannot stand it. You must continue antagonizing him, okay? Keep him unsteady. It's been a great deal of help."

"Anything, of course, Katara," Zuko promises. And on an impulse, he leans up and kisses her.

"Hold that thought," she replies, but her smirk fades into a frown. "Zuko, where's your sca—oh, you hateful mortals!"

Koh asserts a new face, except that it's not a new face. It's Ummi's again.

"You heard her!" the Fire Lord yells, retreating a few steps. "Don't let up!"

Toph chuckles and hefts her umpteenth stone. "Don't have to tell me twice, Sparky."

Under harassment from both inside and out, Koh does begin to switch faces much more swiftly, as Katara had predicted. At first the benders can still keep track of the different visages and hear snippets of their actual owner's conversation, but then it becomes much too fast. The faces blur together, eyes and noses and mouths not seeming to belong to anyone in particular, and Koh's actual body spasms as if in the throes of seizure, arching and twisting and writhing in acute yet unknown agony.

Soon enough, the violence of his movements rends the vines, and he flops onto the ground, continuing to shake as his faces now rotate with stomach-turning speed. The benders finally cease their assault, backing up a safe distance as Koh acts out his death throes while still alive, smashing himself into the ground, the tree, anything in an attempt to regain his control.

But it is not to be.

With nothing but a colorful blur where his face ought to be, and with his whole body vibrating at such a high frequency that he has no defined outline, Koh lets out a piercing, whining howl of a cry that quickly climbs past the levels of human hearing. Light bursts in shining rays from between his armored bands, in all his cracks, and the benders are forced to look away, shielding their eyes from this personal supernova.

When the light fades, and they look back, there is a heap of people and animals on the ground where Koh had been, all in varying states of consciousness. The insect-like shell of the spirit, though, is nowhere to be seen.

Zuko glances at the others, who are all glancing around as well, and then he hurtles into the freed souls' midst. "Katara!" he yells, helping some people up and raking his eyes across the ground, desperate for any sign of her, and he accidentally starts in Ummi's direction, mislead by the Water attire. "Katara!"

"Sparky! Over here!" Toph corrects, pointing a helpful finger.

The Fire Lord whirls, nearly tripping in his haste, and scrambles to the unmoving figure clad in a sky-blue robe. He falls to his knees at her side and begins tapping her cheek, unable to keep from remembering when he did this before, that first horrible night when she had been stolen from him…

"Katara, please, wake up," he begs again, shifting some of her hair from her face—oh, thank Agni she has it back again!—and cupping his hand to her cheek. "C'mon, Katara, just open your eyes…please open your eyes…"

And this time, she does.

Slowly and unevenly, her eyelids rise, revealing more of one cobalt iris than the other, and she focuses with some difficulty on her husband. Her brow wrinkles, as if she can't quite come to terms with this, and she whispers, "Zuko?"

He lets out a relieved gasp of laughter and gathers her up in his arms, crushing her to his chest and bestowing innumerable kisses upon her hair. "Oh, Katara, you're back, you're really back…I was so scared I'd never see you again, but you're here, none of that matters now, you're here, thank Agni you're here…"

She must have woken up further, as she winds her arms around his body and holds onto him just as tightly as he holds her, and he numbly feels her tears on his chest, dampening the skin.

"Spirits, Zuko, it was horrible in there," she sobs. "I mean, I managed to hold it together and everything because I had to, but…there wasn't a second when I wasn't terrified that this was going to be it, that I would have to stay there in that awful darkness forever…"

"It's over now, shhh," he soothes, and he combs his fingers through her hair. "I'm here. It's okay. It's okay."

She curls further into his body, but her breaths are coming slower now as she relaxes against the familiar form of the firebender.

Meanwhile, Toph and Aang are helping the others to their feet and the airbender, at least, is directing them to various parts of the Spirit World. Many of them are bewildered to be free of Koh's void-like inside, and Aang has to counsel some of them more thoroughly before they totter off towards their own ends.

"Well," Toph observes as the last of the spirits disperses. "I think this ended as well as could be expected."

Aang straightens in time to see Zuko and Katara pull each other into a mutual kiss, and his expression is unreadable for a long moment. At length, he sighs, and looks at Toph.

"Yeah," he agrees with a genuine smile. "I think it ended up alright."


	8. otto

_**Koh's Reckoning**_

_**viii.**_

Katara eases back from Zuko's lips and allows her brow to furrow slightly, picking up an old train of thought, and she delicately touches the unscarred left side of his face. "Zuko…what happened to your scar? Why is it gone? Did you get it healed in my absence?" she concludes with a bit more humor.

He shakes his head, although he raises his own hand to keep hers against his cheek. "No, this is just because we're in the Spirit World. Apparently bodily injuries don't affect your soul, so when you're just your soul…" He trails off with a shrug. "It'll be back once we return to the real world, though."

She keeps tracing the smooth contours with her thumb, her expression somewhat scrutinizing. At length she admits, "You know, this is going to sound extremely weird, but I think I kinda…miss it."

He pulls her into an unexpected hug and mumbles into the crook of her neck, "No…I like how that sounds."

When they separate this time, it is to see Kuruk and Ummi approaching them. The Fire royalty gets to their feet just in time for Ummi to collect Katara's hands in an excited grip.

"We are free!" she exclaims, tears of joy still wet on her cheeks. "And it's all because of you, Katara!"

"Oh, well, not really," the waterbender dismisses. "We all had to work together to get out of that bind."

Ummi nods, already moving on to bigger and better things, and she grasps Kuruk's hand tightly. "We're finally going to be wed! Isn't that just wonderful?"

"Better late than never," Kuruk puts in, beaming as he draws his wife-to-be back into his side. "I am deeply indebted to you, all of you, for your help," he adds, glancing around at the benders.

"No problemo, Bearhat," Toph states with a grin.

Aang bows with a little more class. "It was an honor to help one of my former lives," he intones. "I am simply glad we were able to set things right and defeat Koh."

The earthbender glances around. "Yeah, whatever happened to Ugly-Scorpion-Bottom? He kinda lit up like…er, like one of those firecracker things, right, and then more or less vanished from all sight."

As Toph is saying this, Katara regards her with a confused expression. Leaning in close to Zuko, she asks in a whisper, "Why is she talking about this like she's actually seen it?"

Zuko lifts his eyebrows, both his eyebrows, in a meaningful way. "You remember what I said about bodily injuries not applying here…?"

The waterbender blinks in astonishment. "She can _see_?"

Her husband nods. "And I think she'd like to see you. She already poked Aang and me all over; it's high time it was your turn."

Katara looks uncertain as to whether being poked all over is something she'd enjoy, but nevertheless she leaves Zuko's side with one last parting squeeze of his hand and approaches the earthbender. Toph regards her with her typical quizzical expression, and the older girl ventures, "So…you're not blind, I hear."

"Nail on the head, Sugar Queen," Toph drawls, and after a moment, as if she cannot stop herself, she hugs Katara fiercely. Before the waterbender can even react, the black-haired girl draws away and kicks at the dirt as if nothing ever happened.

"Okay then," the Fire Lady acknowledges. "Zuko said you'd probably want to…poke me, or something."

Toph glowers a bit. "Not _poke_. I don't go around poking people. It's just that I'm used to seeing you through touch, and now that I can see you with my eyes, I'd like to create a bridge between the two versions of you. That's all. It's nothing freaky or weird. Sparky's just a big baby."

Katara laughs a little. "You didn't have to go on a tangent, Toph. I was going to let you."

She coughs. "Oh. Right then. Here goes…"

After a few minutes, Toph's fingers fall away from her face, but they do not assume their usual places on her hips or crossed on her chest. Her arms simply hang at her sides, and she fails to lower her gaze. Katara thinks that perhaps, given another person and another circumstance, this prolonged eye contact would be disconcerting. But as it is, it only makes the waterbender feel a little sad.

It's not as if she has long to look.

"Just one more thing, Katara," the younger girl says quietly, as if she does not want Aang or Zuko to overhear.

"Ask away."

Toph chews her lower lip for a moment, looking oddly contemplative, and finally queries, "What color are your eyes?"

Katara smiles. "Blue," she replies.

The earthbender nods, her own smile flickering at one corner of her mouth, the evanescent expression steeped in bittersweet.

"Blue…" she echoes wistfully. "I think…yeah, I think I'll miss blue."

On her own impulse now, the waterbender captures her friend in an embrace. When she pulls away, she points out, "You know, Toph…I would really like to get back to my body, and I'm sure Zuko will be only too happy to leave this place, but…you don't have to go yet if you don't want to. As long as Aang stays around to help you leave and such, I think you could probably stay here. Not forever, but for awhile. Just so you don't have to lose this yet."

The earthbender swallows and scuffs her feet on the ground. At length, shiftily, she glances up at Katara. "Yeah," she agrees. "I might have to do that. Although I wish it wasn't more time with Twinkle Toes," she adds, pulling a face, "but what can you do."

Katara grins at that remark but hastily straightens her face as Aang meanders over to them. He is doing his best to avoid meeting her eyes, but she's not surprised at his discomfort. This was all basically a product of his continued affection, after all, and now everybody knows it.

"I couldn't help but overhear that last bit," he says, sparing a certain earthbender a brief glare, "but you don't have to go yet, either, Katara."

She wrinkles her brow. "Um, no offense, but why would I stay?"

Zuko has walked over now as well, and he drapes an arm around her waist. "What? Why's Katara staying?"

"I'm not staying," she corrects.

"Well, you might want to," Aang perseveres. "I mean…well, Katara, you realize your mother is here, right?"

Something unfocuses in her expression, her eyes growing distant, and her brow pinches, ever so slightly. It takes her a moment to remember to inhale, however habitual the action still is, and when she does, the air shakes all the way down.

"Katara? You okay?" her husband inquires, trying to catch her eye.

Her hand rises halfway to her neck, but she is not wearing the necklace, and even so, her hand falls away again.

"No," she breathes eventually. "No, I don't think that's…no, I'm not staying. I can't."

Aang frowns in confusion. "I don't mean to press, but why not? Haven't you always wanted to see her again?"

"I know what I've wanted," she replies, the words slightly edged. "But…I think those wounds are finally healing. I don't want to open them up again." She pauses, shakes her head. "I don't want that anymore."

"So what do you want to do?" the Avatar asks.

Katara glances up at Zuko. "I just want to go home."

The monk sighs, but it is a commendably subtle exhalation. "Alright. If you ever want to, though, I can apparently bring you here. You're staying, though, right, Toph?" he says, changing his focus.

The petite earthbender chews her lip again, looking at Katara for some kind of sign, but the older girl only shrugs, indicating it's all Toph's decision.

"I…I don't think so," she eventually says. "This has all been…well, beautiful," she admits, glancing at Zuko, "but it's also like a dream. I'll remember this forever, cherish it forever, but…this isn't how my life is. Besides," she adds with more of her usual humor, "I'm really missing my earthbending. Throwing rocks with your hands just isn't the same."

Aang nods. "So we're all going back."

"Sounds like it," Katara confirms.

"By the way," the Avatar says as they assemble themselves into a line. "Katara, your body isn't in the Spirit Oasis with us. It's still back in the Fire Nation capital. This means that it'll be a few days before we see each other again."

She processes this and ultimately sulks a bit. "That was shortsighted of you," she complains, and she tightens her hold on Zuko's hand.

"A few days are a lot better than forever," he reminds her, dusting a kiss onto her hair.

She huffs. "Alright, alright. Aang, take us home."

The Avatar concentrates and then, as he begins to glow, sends a beam of light into the center of their chests. Softly, everything fades to white.

* * *

In the royal suite of the Fire palace, Katara opened her eyes.

She stared up at the ceiling, or at least at the blood-red draperies that enveloped the four-poster bed. She blinked a few times, not yet moving, wanting to re-adapt herself to the world before just jumping headlong into it. The mixed scent of volcano smoke and sea salt tickled her nostrils, and slowly, she shifted up onto one elbow, twisting at the waist to gaze out the open balcony doors.

The sky was bright and blue, not even one cloud disturbing its majesty.

Katara sighed inwardly. "Toph would've liked to see that," she murmured to herself.

A particularly loud noise sounded from the other direction, and before she could even think, she already had a waterwhip in her hand, streamed directly out of the air and ready to unleash. But with a little laugh, she realized it was only Sokka, asleep in a chair at her bedside with his head lolled back and his mouth wide open.

She dissipated the whip, and just as she did this, Suki walked in carrying a tray.

"Oh, hi, Suki," Katara greeted, sitting up a bit more in the bed and adjusting the covers.

The Kyoshi warrior nearly dropped the tray, and only her quick reflexes allowed her to recover it. She also managed to contain a yelp of surprise, but her navy eyes were wide when they fixed on her sister-in-law.

"Katara?" she croaked. "You're…?" She left it hanging, clearly at a loss for adjectives.

"Back, awake, alive, yes," the waterbender supplied with a smile.

Suki haphazardly set down the tray and gathered up the other girl's hands with her own. "Oh, spirits, this is just…just fantastic! I'm so glad you're okay…hey, Sokka! Sokka! Your sister's awake."

The Water tribesman woke as grumpily and lethargically as he usually did. "Eh? Wha? Something's what now?"

Suki batted his shoulder. "Your sister, Katara, silly! She's awake!"

He swung half-open eyes in her direction, and then, with comic abruptness, they opened wide. "Dear, spirits, Katara!" he exclaimed, falling most inelegantly out of his chair. He scrambled to his knees and reached across the mattress, grabbing one of her hands. "You're not dead!"

The Fire Lady glanced at his wife, who shook her head. "Um, Sokka, I don't think I ever was dead…"

"Doesn't matter," her brother mumbled, pressing his forehead against her hand, and when he lifted his head to meet her eyes, she was startled to see tears glistening. "You can never scare us like that again, alright? I already lost Mom…I couldn't even bear the thought of losing you."

"Sokka, I'm so sorry," Katara said, slightly taken aback by the strength of his fingers on hers and the sheer weight present in his eyes. He just made a pathetic little noise and buried his forehead back into her hand.

Suki rose from her half-seat on the mattress' edge. "I'll go fetch your father, Katara. After that, I'll track down General Iroh, and—"

"No, wait," the waterbender burst, finally retrieving her much-wetter hand from Sokka. "I can't stay here, Suki. Zuko and the others are in the North Pole—I have to get going! I have to at least meet them halfway!"

As if they'd rehearsed this, both Sokka and Suki pushed her smartly back against the pillows.

"No can do, little sis," the male warrior said with a cluck of his tongue. "You had your soul stolen from your body and have otherwise been completely out of commission. No ice skating across the oceans for you, nuh-uh!"

She fought against their hold, but she realized that he was right; even this small amount of exertion was rapidly draining the energy from her limbs, and she was forced to slump back into the pillows.

"But…but Zuko…" she began unhappily, protesting only slightly when Suki tucked her in.

"He'll be here soon," the Kyoshi warrior promised as she finished her task. "In the meantime, have this broth I've brought for you."

Katara lazily bent a small whip from the bowl and pulled a face after tasting it. "No offense, but it's a little bland, isn't it?"

Suki put her hands on her hips. "Well, you didn't complain before."

"I was unconscious before," the other girl felt the need to point out.

Suki huffed but could not retain this indignation for long. "Yeah, okay. I'll get something more substantial from the kitchens. No, actually, Sokka, get something more substantial from the kitchens. Not _every_thing," she added swiftly, "just something. I have to find Chief Hakoda."

As she bustled out of the room, Sokka smiled crookedly at his sister. "It'll be okay. The Angry Jerk will be here soon."

She arched a brow. "You really need to stop calling my husband that."

He pretended to gag. "Ew, husband. Ew, you married Zuko—" He cut himself off as she chucked one of her many pillows at his head. "Never mind, Katara," he called over his shoulder as he retreated to the kitchens. "Maybe you'll be up and about sooner than we thought, with that kind of arm on you!"

She crossed those arms on her chest and looked back out the window.

"Oh, you just wait and see. I'm counting on that."

* * *

Toph at first became aware of the grass tickling her legs and feet, and then of the gentle slosh of the koi pond's waters, and then of the koi themselves, swirling in their eternal dance, and then of the distant roar and pound of the waterfall. There was crisp, snow-edged air and the faint fragrance of earth and the curious, hot-spring-like warmth that permeated the Spirit Oasis.

There was also darkness, so much darkness.

She blinked her useless eyes and absently shoved her hair back from her face, as if that would make any difference. When it didn't, as she had known all along that it wouldn't, she let it fall back.

"You guys might feel a little light-headed for awhile," she heard Aang say, and she was, as usual, barely aware of his vibrations as he sprang to his feet. "Sit tight, and I'll fetch Appa."

"Alright, but hurry," Zuko replied, and she sensed him getting slowly to his feet and brushing off his knees. He groaned softly as his knees clicked in protest, but otherwise managed to straighten to his full height.

Toph studied the subtle vibrations of him with her earthbending, trying to re-paint his colors into this meager silhouette. It wasn't as easy as she would have liked, and she couldn't quite swallow a sigh.

He turned his head to look at her—how she missed looking!—and stepped a few paces closer. "You okay, Toph?" he asked with honest concern.

She pulled a face. "Can you keep a secret, Sparky?"

He crouched down next to her, as she remained slouched back on her hands. "You know I can."

She blinked again, but this time because tears, shameful and stupid tears, were burning her sightless eyes.

"I miss it."

Zuko sat down all the way, crossing his legs comfortably, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'd be incredibly surprised if you didn't," he told her, his voice gentle.

"I never really knew what I was missing before," she went on, hating how her voice was cracking and weak but unable to make it stronger. "So I wasn't all that bothered. But now…now that I've seen…"

He was silent, at a momentary loss, and merely flexed his fingers to convey a sense of comfort. "I know it's not at all the same," he said at length, "but it was such a relief, in a way, not to have my scar for awhile. It was like that whole chapter of my life had been neatly erased and replaced with something so much better, happier, _something_." He shook his head. "And now that it's back…well, I'm reminded that all that stuff happened, too. It's kind of how you described seeing, back before we returned here…it was like a dream."

She scoffed, but quietly. "I'd like to dream it again sometime," she confessed.

He tapped his fingers against his chin, thoughtful. "Y'know…I bet you will dream it, literally. As long as you remember it, as long as it's there in your head," he said, teasingly poking her forehead, "then I'm sure it'll come back to you while you're asleep."

She laughed, one weak exhalation, but it was still a laugh. "If I start sleeping twelve hours a day, you'll know why."

He raised his good eyebrow, and she was just aware of the expression. "What, you don't already do that? Ow!"

She waggled her fist at him, letting him know she was more than ready to strike him again, but he glanced skyward and interrupted their moment.

"Oh, here comes Aang," he stated. He began to rise, but she caught onto his arm.

"Wait, Sparky," she blurted, and he lowered himself back to her level. "Before we leave, I just wanted to…"

"To what?" he prompted, but then her fingers settled on the left side of his face and traced the folds of his scar, and he didn't need an answer.

"Y'know, it's funny, Zuko," she said softly, "but I never really knew you had this. Like I never really knew Aang had that stupid arrow tattoo. So in a way," she continued, more seriously, "you've always been that boy with the happier past, because I'd never known otherwise."

She lowered her hand from his face. "And in that same way, I guess that's all you'll ever be to me," she concluded. "I don't know what you look like with it, so I'll always remember you without it."

He smiled, and it was faint and hard to sense, but she was aware of it all the same. "I suppose, ironically, you're the only one who can truly see past it," he quipped, his smile broadening to a grin.

"Don't push your luck, Sparky," she dismissed offhandedly, needing to reclaim her nonchalance. But nevertheless, she accepted the hand he extended in her direction and allowed him to help her to her feet, just as the sudden and startling vibrations of Appa's landing rode up through her toes.

"You ready to go?" Aang called down from his lofty perch.

Toph groaned, her shoulders slumping. "Oh, I hate flying…"

* * *

When Sokka and Suki came by Katara's suite to deliver her lunch the next day, the former was forced to throw up his hands and theatrically sigh.

"Spirits, that girl just can't obey one single order, can she?" he asked, lowering his arms to cross on his chest and observing her very empty bed.

Suki set the tray down on the vanity table and lifted a hastily scrawled note. "'Sorry, I hate waiting'," she read, and set it back down. "Well. It's concise, at least."

Sokka walked over to the balcony and glanced out over the city, as if he could actually spot his escaping sister. "I guess she's always had a mind of her own. Her and that silly magic water," he said, shaking his head.

"Don't worry. I'm sure she's fine, and she'll be back soon enough," Suki consoled him.

He threw up a hand and stalked away. "I'm not waiting up for her this time!"

"You didn't even wait up for her last time," his wife pointed out with a wry smile.

He flourished his hand again. "No! No-no! I'm going to storm out and you shall not stop me!"

Suki just rolled her eyes and quietly closed the door behind them.

* * *

Shading her eyes against the fierce brightness of the sun, Katara peered up into the sky. Her ice-sled bobbed on the waves beneath her, not requiring much in the way of conscious thought to remain frozen, and she was free to scan for Appa. The bison would be flying, well, as the bison flies, or in the straightest line possible between the North Pole and Fire's capital. She was assiduously following such a path, but she had yet to come across any sign of them. Of course, she couldn't bend as fast as Appa could fly, even if she were capable of traveling at quite a clip, and even two solid days of travel on her part wouldn't equate to much on theirs. It would probably still be another day yet…

She frowned, narrowing her eyes further as if that could actually extend the range of her vision. Was that tiny dot on the northern horizon what she hoped it would be? There was only one way to find out.

Calling upon her powers, Katara changed the waves and currents to suit her needs, and soon she was skidding along the foamy crests, leaping from wave top to wave top like a particularly feisty salmon.

High, high above her, Appa was indeed crossing the skies, and thankfully Aang happened to glance down at the ocean in time to see the very waterbent geysers she was using as a signal flare.

"Hey, it's Katara!" he yelled, and he pulled sharply on Appa's reins, causing the bison to veer down and around in a tight, controlled spiral.

"What, here?" Zuko wondered, although that didn't stop him from flinging himself at the edge of the saddle and searching the sea.

"Oh, yeah, it is her!" Toph joined in grumpily, still firmly seated with her head tilted back and her eyes closed.

The male benders didn't seem to notice as Appa flew quite close to the waters and Katara catapulted herself up, living up to her note and not being a remotely patient person. She landed smack in the middle of the saddle and was instantly tackled by Zuko.

"You're here, in the real world, with your real face!" he exclaimed, and he took her head in both hands and kissed her soundly.

"Yes, yes, I'm all back in one piece," she confirmed, giggling as he crushed her anew in an energetic embrace. "And you guys all made it back, too—it's nice to know you really are a bridge between the worlds, Aang."

He grinned, vaulting the lip of the saddle to join the gang. "Well, I never figured I was like an actual footpath, but there ya go," he laughed. "How about a group hug?"

The three of them did just that, but Katara raised her head and glanced at Toph. "C'mon, he said group hug. Not most-of-the-group hug. Get over here!"

"Yeah, no, I'd really rather nooooot!" The earthbender dragged out the last syllable as Zuko snatched onto her wrist and hauled her into the huddle. "Oy, Sparky, careful! I'm a very delicate person!"

"Yeah, yeah, of course you are," he dismissed.

She pouted. "Sugar Queen, your Sugar King's being mean to me!" she fake-wailed.

"Zuko, be nice," Katara chastised, though she had to dissolve into laughter once more. "Sugar King? Dear spirits, that was unexpected!"

The Fire Lord spared the earthbender a glare. "That's not to become official, is it?" he growled.

"Nah," Toph assured him. "I'm much too fond of Sparky."

Aang frowned. "Hey, can I get a new nickname? I've never really appreciated Twinkle Toes."

Toph grinned, or at least she showed her teeth. "How about Stupid Arrow Head?"

The Avatar glared at her as well. "No, no, Twinkle Toes is fine. By the way, this group hug is over," he declared, retreating to the far side of the saddle from Toph, but as Katara began to settle into Zuko's side, he reached out and touched her arm. "Wait…can I talk to you?"

She glanced between the air- and firebender and shrugged. "Yeah, why not."

"Over here?" Aang continued, jerking his thumb at Appa's large, furry head.

Katara frowned faintly but got to her feet anyway and clambered off the saddle, catching onto the reins for stability. Aang sat across from her, although given the space he had available, he was almost sitting atop her.

After not speaking for an awkward duration, the airbender sighed. "I just…wanted to apologize."

She nodded and said, with a bit of a smirk, "I'd say it's not your fault, but, well…it kind of is."

Aang studied his interlaced fingers before finally managing to lift his gaze to hers. "I know that," he confirmed quietly. "That's why I'm apologizing. I should've let go of you a year ago, but…I didn't. I didn't want to, is the truth of the matter," he confessed. "I've always wanted you to be happy, Katara, I've never lied about that, but I always figured that you'd…well, that you'd realize that being happy was the same thing as being with me."

She listened in silence, letting him have his say, and only watched him with a serious, contemplative expression.

"Even after you got engaged to Zuko…" He shook his head. "I kept thinking you'd…heh, come to your senses before it was too late. Even at your wedding," he said, whispering now, "I thought maybe you wouldn't show…"

"Aang," she interrupted now, soft and sympathetic, but he raised a hand before she could continue.

"No, no, I'm not saying this as some last-ditch attempt to get you back," he said firmly. "I'm explaining myself in the hope of forgiveness. Because I realized during all this that we're not meant to be together. I mean, I was deeply hurt by what happened to you, but Zuko…it was like something inside him had started to die. And I knew that it was my fault he felt that way. Koh might've actually taken you away, but I had always wished you would leave him, so when it happened, it was like I'd willed it to happen…"

"Aang, please," Katara said, reaching across the short distance to take one of his hands in hers. "You're kind of rambling now. You don't need to beat yourself up about any of this. Love's not an easy thing to fall out of, so I don't blame you for still having feelings for me. I admit myself a little surprised, but I'm not mad or anything about it. You have nothing to worry about."

The airbender bowed his head. "I think we've had this conversation before," he mumbled.

"Kind of, yeah," she agreed with a half-grin.

He smiled a bit, too, just one corner of his lips curling. "I promise this will be the last."

She poked him in the arrow. "Is that an Avatar promise?"

His smile broadened. "Yeah. An Avatar promise. None of my future lives will bother you, either."

She got to her feet carefully, steadying herself on the bison's saddle. "Well, don't go dying on me any time soon," she remarked as she clambered back into the saddle's safety.

"I have no plans to," he assured her, and he gathered the reins back in his hands and looked towards the horizon. After a deep inhalation, he let it out slowly, focusing on the sensation of expelling the air. He reopened his eyes and reclaimed a remnant of his previous smile. Letting go of her wouldn't be as easy as letting go of that breath, but it was the same principle.

He just had to want to.

* * *

Night's shadows cloaked the royal suite in darkness, but a darkness with shades to it, not a darkness that was absolute. Moonlight also flooded across the floor, spilling in from the floor-length windows, but despite the differences, to Katara, it still seemed too much the same.

She cuddled further into the safety of Zuko's body, and he brushed his fingers against the hair above her ear.

"You don't need to be scared," he whispered. "Koh won't be coming back."

"I know," she admitted, but that didn't make her spine any less rigid. "It's not something I can easily shake, though. I'm afraid logic doesn't often stand up well to fear."

He frowned and wrapped her even more thoroughly in his arms, drawing her as close as physically possible. "Trust me, love, I won't let anything happen to you. Besides, Koh kind of…exploded, or something. Even if he did survive that, I think he learned his lesson when it comes to stealing faces."

Her brow furrowed thoughtfully. "Y'know…what _did_ happen to him? I wasn't really aware of what was going on; he was rotating faces so quickly, I was just stuck in this blur of Spirit World and Koh's abyss. It was dizzying, and then suddenly you were there, waking me up…"

"Yeah, I don't know," Zuko agreed musingly, and he eased onto his back, the fingers on one hand still toying with her hair while his other hand slipped comfortably behind his head. "Aang said he was some sort of incredibly ancient spirit, and if he _is_ the brother-spirit of the Avatar, well, can he be killed?"

"The Avatar spirit can be killed if the vessel is killed in the State," Katara reeled off as if she'd memorized that for an exam, adding in her own contradiction, "but the Avatar spirit is bound to a mortal. I guess that makes it mortal."

"And Koh has no such bond," the firebender finished. "So I guess he wouldn't die, per se."

She draped an arm across his body and used his chest as a pillow. It was so comfortable here, and her head was so heavy… "Maybe he just faded away," she guessed, her voice soft with sleep.

"Either way, he can't hurt you now," Zuko promised, kissing the top of her head.

"Not with you here," she mumbled, her eyelids sliding shut.

"No," he whispered as she drifted asleep, "not while I'm here." He ran his fingers carefully down the curve of her cheek and kissed her softly again.

"Sweet dreams, Katara. See you in the morning."

* * *

In the darkness, it weeps.

Cringing, it retreats into the depths of shadow, hunkering in on its shapeless form in an attempt to hide its shame and failure from the worlds. It is nothing now, not even a ghost of something else; it is merely unsculpted clay, not even worthy of fashioning.

"I am nothing," Koh moans, writhing in agony. "Is this what you wanted? I am nothing!"

_Have you not learned the truth, my son?_

The combined voice of the oldest spirits wells up from the ground and rains down from the sky, and in its safe darkness, Koh shudders at the sound.

"The truth?" it spits, spiteful even in its deepest sorrow. "What truth? That you have hideously tortured me for all of eternity? You sicken me!"

_It was not your destiny to be the Avatar. It was not your place to take upon endless forms._

"Is that how you justify taking away mine?" it says in a weary half-demand, half-plea. "I had to make my own face, and then when that was lost, now you deign to visit me? Now you come to gloat? Leave! _Leave!_"

_We did not steal your face. You simply could not see the truth._

The miserable spirit hesitates, and if it had retained features, it would have frowned. "What?" it whispers.

_We did not steal your face, _the elder spirits repeat. _You might not have been meant to wear your brother's, but you were always meant to wear your own. We only disguised your face in the hope that you would discover it by yourself and learn to love it again. Have you not learned the lesson?_

Koh doesn't immediately know what to make of this; it must ponder the words, turning them over and over until they begin to glimmer in the light. "I…have always been here? The same, underneath somewhere?"

_Underneath our masks, we are all the same. You simply wore more masks than most, but eventually, you will delve deeply enough. Do you not realize that in striving to make your own face, you only deviated further from the truth?_

The spirit squirms uncomfortably. "How can this be so?" it rallies. "What am I, then?"

_The mortal humans have a saying, my son: Change is the only constant. But that is not necessarily true. All things must be balanced—your siblings, Fire and Water, and also Air and Earth, and even we form two halves of a whole, perpetuating space and time. But you also have a balance, and you share it with your brother the Avatar._

"If he is change…" Koh begins, quiet in the dawn of comprehension.

_Then you shall be permanence. As he flits from form to form in an infinite succession, so you shall stay the same. And when the mortal world ends, when all that is physical fails and crumbles to less than dust, it shall be you who is called upon to remember; it shall be you who may never forget. _

_Many things are fleeting, my son. You alone are permanent._

"Then all this time…" he breathes, tears welling up in his eyes. "Then all this time I have been a lie? All this time I've sought to be the very thing I can never be? Changing?"

_You could never wear your brother's face—not in the beginning, not now. There must be balance._

Koh swallows. "And if I accept this role? How do I embrace permanence?"

_It is not something you must choose. It is something you already are._

Their voices fade back into the ether, melting effortlessly into the ground and the streams and the wind and the sun. They are silent now, but he can still sense their presence in this place, in the passage from second to second. He smiles faintly at the shadows, the merest whisper of an expression, but it is still an expression.

In the darkness, Koh unfolds and rises to his feet.

And from the darkness, he strides into the light.

_**fin.**_

* * *

A/N: Thank you so very much for reading, especially those of you who started it two years ago, or whenever I started this story...it means a lot that you picked it back up and continued supporting it. As always, this story wouldn't be anything without readers, so thank you. And also as always, reviews are love.

Long live Zutara!

-Faye


End file.
